The Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is pleased to announce that Jeremy Grant is joining the NIST team as a senior executive advisor. Mr. Grant has been selected to manage the establishment of a National Program Office for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC).

Mr. Grant comes to NIST with a diverse background and deep understanding of identity and cybersecurity issues, having served in a range of leadership positions spanning government and industry. He began his career as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate, where he drafted the legislation which laid the groundwork for the Department of Defense and GSA smart card and PKI efforts. Mr. Grant then joined the Intelligent Technologies Division at MAXIMUS, a government services firm, where he led the division's Security and Identity Management practice, and played a major role in a number of major federal identity and security programs. He then spent three years with Washington Research Group as the firm's identity and cybersecurity market analyst. Most recently, Jeremy served as Chief Development Officer for ASI Government (formerly Acquisition Solutions, Inc.), a consulting firm focused on helping government agencies improve results through the application of better acquisition, organizational and program management practices. Jeremy is a former co-chair of the Identity Management Committee at TechAmerica (previously the Information Technology Association of America). He graduated with distinction from the University of Michigan with dual concentrations in biology and political science.

NSTIC is to be a new initiative created as a result of the Obama Administration's Cyberspace Policy Review, which called for building "a cybersecurity-based identity management vision and strategy that addresses privacy and civil-liberties interests, leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies for the nation" as of one of ten near-term action items. NSTIC will be focused on establishing identity solutions and privacy-enhancing technologies to improve the security and convenience of sensitive online transactions through the process of authenticating individuals, organizations, and underlying infrastructure.

The National Program Office, to be established within the Department of Commerce, will be responsible for bringing the public and private sectors together to meet this challenge. Specific responsibilities will include:

• Building consensus on legal, technical and policy frameworks necessary to achieve the NSTIC vision, including ways to enhance privacy, free expression and open markets;
• Working with industry to identify where new standards or collaborative efforts may be needed to enable Americans to use – and businesses and other entities to accept – stronger, more secure online authentication technologies;
• Coordinating collaboration across government stakeholders, including agencies such as the General Services Administration and Department of Homeland Security, as well as state and local governments; and
• Guiding NSTIC pilot projects and other NSTIC-related implementations.

More information regarding NSTIC can be found at http://www.nist.gov/nstic/ or by contacting William (Curt) Barker at wbarker@nist.gov.