Many U.S. Government information technology systems rely on strong cryptographic schemes to protect the integrity and confidentiality of the data they process. The use of common algorithms as defined by Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) requires the establishment of secret keying material that is shared in advance. As the number of entities using a system grows, so too does the work involved in distributing the secret keying materials. It is therefore essential to support cryptographic algorithms with automated key-establishment schemes.

NIST announces the publication of Special Publication (SP) 800-56B Revision 2, Recommendation for Pair-Wise Key Establishment Schemes Using Integer Factorization Cryptography, which specifies key-transport and key-agreement schemes using the RSA cryptographic algorithm. This revision approves additional key sizes for key establishment, removes provisions for using the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (TDEA), and removes the KTS-KEM-KWS key-transport scheme that was included in previous versions of this recommendation. Additionally, the key derivation methods required for the key agreement schemes have been moved to SP 800-56C Revision 1, Recommendation for Key-Derivation Methods in Key-Establishment Schemes.