AES ENCRYPTION BECOMES THE STANDARD
After much feedback, debate and analysis, the Rijndael cipher (a mash of the Belgian creators’ last names Daemen and Rijmen) was selected as the proposed algorithm for AES in October 2000 and published by NIST as U.S. FIPS PUB 197. The Advanced Encryption Standard became effective as a federal government standard in 2002. It is also included in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 18033-3 standard, which specifies block ciphers for the purpose of data confidentiality.
In June 2003, the U.S. government announced that AES could be used to protect classified information, and it soon became the default encryption algorithm for protecting classified information as well as the first publicly accessible and open cipher approved by the NSA for top-secret information. The NSA chose AES as one of the cryptographic algorithms to be used by its Information Assurance Directorate to protect national security systems.