NIST CO-SPONSORS GOVERNMENT-INDUSTRY IT SECURITY FORUM.

NIST and the National Security Agency (NSA), partners in the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), hosted a Government-Industry IT Security Forum in March 2001, at Indiana University. The purpose of the forum was to discuss potential public and private sector strategies for the development of IT security requirements and security specifications needed for the protection of government, business, and personal computing and real-time control systems. The forum brought national attention to the concept of security requirements definition and its importance in developing a more secure information infrastructure within the U.S. Some 175 participants heard key leaders from government, industry, and academia share their views on the role of security requirements in the development, testing, and acquisition of commercial products and systems. There was also discussion on prospective approaches to security requirements development, the importance of national and international standards, cost-effective and timely testing strategies, and the use of state-of-the-art tools and techniques in this area.

The NIAP IT Security Forum followed the First Symposium on Requirements Engineering for Information Security (SREIS) hosted by the Purdue University Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) in cooperation with NIST, the North Carolina State University (NCSU) E-commerce program and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The Web site is http://niap.nist.gov.