After four years of testing, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced its favorite “lightweight cryptography” encryption method designed for use in low-power IoT devices.
Connected IoT devices such as wearables, smart home devices and even car-to-car technology are ubiquitous, and the key to their success is their small size. That comes with its own challenges, though, including chips that are more powerful than what we typically see in smartphones or computers. These couldn’t handle traditionally heavier encryption methods, so new standards were introduced.
Optimized encryption would enable smaller devices to handle sensitive personal information, which could be useful, for example, for wearable device users who want to be able to access their health data.
ASCON encryption
There were 57 proposals in the plan, which was later whittled down to 10 finalists (opens in a new tab). The announcement explains:
“The decision was challenging because most finalists demonstrated performance advantages over NIST standards on a variety of target platforms without introducing security concerns.”
finally, Selected ASCON (opens in a new tab) Because of its flexibility, energy efficiency, and ability to run smoothly on less powerful hardware. Its longevity is also commendable, having been around since 2014 and having withstood “years of scrutiny by cryptographers”.
NIST computer scientist Kerry McKay, explain (opens in a new tab) “One of the ASCON variants provides a measure of resistance to attacks that might be launched by powerful quantum computers,” showing its impressive resilience.
That is, NIST has Start research on quantum safe public key encryption algorithmOpened with 82 proposals.
This means that in the future, as the era of seamless connectivity approaches, the number of devices capable of securely sharing information will increase significantly.
