National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800 series are familiar topics to people who work in federal workspace. 800 series presents information of interest to the computer security community and comprised of guidelines, recommendations, technical specifications, and annual reports of NIST’s cybersecurity activities. NIST develops SP 800-series publications in accordance with its statutory responsibilities under the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA).

The challenge is there are close to 200 publications. How does each one fit with our work? Some publications are highly specific to an domain, such as 800-187: Guideline to LTE security; 800-167: Guideline to Application Whitelisting. You can pretty sure those are your interests related to your specific roles in your organization.

Meanwhile, I summarize about 15 publications for general awareness. In this list, you will find foundation publications, global awareness subjects, and emerging concepts and ideas.

NIST articles is not like your favorite novels. Not only it could be boring, but also hard to memorize. But imagine them to be cook books and recipes if you want to be a serious cook. The documented information are guidelines that derives your organization’s normal procedures you already use each day.

I created two illustrations to highlight why I consider some publications worth your time of a look up. This is the official site when you access the information: https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/sp800