MISPC

MISPC stands for Minimum Interoperability Specifications for PKI Components.

These are specifications for Public Key Infrastructures for the internal use of the U.S. government electronic infrastructure developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). These efforts do not aim to duplicate existing work of PKI vendors, rather than to ease the integration of the use of public-key technology from possibly inoperable implementations.

This work is being developed with the help of industry partners, using agreements called CRADAs (Cooperative Research and Development Agreements) in the sense that companies and the government work together to specify the PKI products to be produced that the latter will buy as a consumer. In this sense, since the U.S. government is a big buyer, one can expect that the work of the NIST somehow specifies the future of the PKI products that will be used worldwide.