Security Components and Mechanisms Group

In our security research, we focus on the development and management of foundational building-block security mechanisms and techniques that can be integrated into a wide variety of mission-critical U.S. information systems. Our work spans a spectrum from near-term hardening and improvement to the design and analysis of next-generation, leap-ahead security capabilities. Computer security depends fundamentally on the level of trust that can be established for computer software and systems. Our work, therefore, focuses strongly on assurance-building activities ranging from the analysis of software configuration settings to advanced trust architectures to testing tools that surface flaws in software modules. Due to the often manual, and costly, nature of assurance building using current techniques, our work focuses strongly on increasing the applicability and effectiveness of automated techniques wherever feasible. We conduct research collaboratively with government, industry, and academia. The outputs of our research consist of prototype systems, software tools, demonstrations, NIST Special Publications and NIST Interagency Reports, conference papers, and journal papers.