NIST releases three new security guidelines

Government Computer News (GCN) reported that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released three draft guides for public comment before their official publication. From the article:

SP 800-107, titled “Recommendation for Applications Using Approved Hash Algorithms,” is in its second draft release. It provides guidelines for achieving the appropriate level of security when using approved hash functions.

Draft SP 800-121, titled “Guide to Bluetooth Security,” describes the security capabilities of Bluetooth technologies and gives recommendations on securing them effectively.

Draft SP 800-41 Revision 1, titled “Guidelines on Firewalls and Firewall Policy,” updates the original publication released in 2002. It provides recommendations on developing firewall policies and selecting, configuring, testing, deploying and managing firewalls. The publication covers a number of firewall technologies, including packet filtering, stateful inspection, application-proxy gateways, host-based and personal firewalls.

I have begun reading and intend on commenting on the Firewall draft. From my first peek inside it seems very thorough and covers not only firewall policies and requirements but also architecture, rule selection, and life-cycle management.