The National Institute of Standards and Technology is starting 2026 with a smaller staff, a reduced labs budget and more than 700 positions shed since last year at a Wednesday meeting of the agency’s Information Security Privacy Advisory Board.
KEY FACTS
- Staff cuts more than 700 positions shed since last year; ITL headcount 289 after losing about 89 employees.
- Budget a congressional minibus would cut $13 million from NIST’s labs program.
- Validation time past 30 cryptographic validations averaged 348 days; backlog reduced from nearly two years in 2020 to about six months today.
- Post-quantum the agency has recently tested its first post-quantum cryptographic module.
The agency has reduced headcount and reshuffled remaining resources onto a narrower set of priorities focused on critical emerging technologies and administration objectives.
Information Technology Laboratory operations now total 289 people after losing about 89 staff across the last year, and leadership says current constraints require prioritization of work aligned with the new strategy and key federal mandates.
A program page from the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity states the two countries jointly validate cryptography for commercial IT hardware and software purchased by their governments.
The validation process is complex because testers must account for many implementations and unstructured technical documents. The past 30 validations averaged 348 days each and the queue has dropped from nearly two years in 2020 to about six months today. The agency seeks to shorten that to days and expects automation to help, but staffing limits are a constraint.
WHY IT MATTERS
Long validation times and fewer staff could slow federal efforts to migrate systems to quantum-resistant encryption ahead of planned deprecation of older algorithms by 2030. Faster validations are necessary for agencies to replace vulnerable cryptography on a governmentwide timeline.