What is NIST Compliance? A Guide To NIST Standards

nist compliance standards

What is NIST Compliance?

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a key resource for technological advancement. As such, compliance with NIST standards has become a top priority in many high tech industries today, and nist compliance standards.

A Definition of NIST Compliance

What is NIST security standards? The National Institute of Standards and Technology is a government agency that helps other federal agencies with security guidelines.

NIST develops Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) in conjunction with the Department of Commerce. The Secretary of Commerce approves FIPS, which federal agencies must use – they cannot waive these standards.


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NIST Compliance at a Glance

What is NIST?, or the National Institute for Standards and Technology, is an organization that provides guidelines to federal agencies. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework was created by using best practices from several security documents.

One way to meet many regulations is by following NIST laws and guidelines. For example, the nine steps toward FISMA compliance outlined in their Guidelines for Managing and Securing IT Systems can be very helpful.

  • Make sure you know what data and information need to be protected.
  • If you want to start a business in the tech industry, it’s important to have at least baseline controls.
  • Conduct risk assessments to make sure your controls are doing what they’re supposed to do.
  • Write down your baseline security controls in a written plan.
  • Implement security controls to your IT systems
  • Once a security policy is in place, watch to see if it’s effective.
  • Determine the risk of a company based on its security controls.
  • This will allow the computer to process your information.
  • Keep a close eye on the security of your company.

NIST Compliance Benefits

NIST compliance is good because it helps to ensure your company’s infrastructure is secure. It also lays the foundation for what you should do when complying with specific regulations like HIPAA or FISMA.

But NIST isn’t a complete assurance that your data will be safe, which means you need to inventory all of your cyber assets using a value-based approach in order to find out where most sensitive data lies and focus protection efforts on those areas.

NIST SP 800-Series Compliance

NIST 800-series guidelines, such as NIST SP800-53 and NIST SP80037 help government agencies identify their cyber assets and monitor them in a way that allows for quick responses to potential vulnerabilities.

NIST Guidelines

The new NIST guidelines say that you should use at least 8 characters, including a lowercase letter and an uppercase letter, as well as numbers or symbols.

1. Complex

Conventional wisdom says that a complex password is more secure. But in reality, the length of your password should be much more important to you.

2. Some companies have a periodic reset to their commission structure, which causes angst and confusion.

Many companies ask their users to reset passwords every few months, thinking that any unauthorized person who obtained a user’s password will soon be locked out. But frequent changes actually make security worse.

If an attacker already knows a user’s previous password, they won’t have any trouble hacking the new one. The NIST guidelines state that periodic password changes should be removed for this reason.

3. Use a password protection method that has been breached, like the one in Microsoft Word.

The new NIST password guidelines require that every new password be checked against a “blacklist” of words and patterns. This will ensure the passwords are not easy to guess by cybercriminals.

4. Don’t give hints about your password to new employees.

Some companies offer hints or personal questions so users can remember passwords.

But it has been found that with the constant dissemination of personal information on social media or through social engineering, attackers are able to find this information easily. This is why the NIST guidelines forbid these questions during an interview process.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.