The Data Encryption Standard: Past and FutureFirst appeared in Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 76, no. 5, pp. 550559, May 1988. U.S. government work not protected by U.S. copyright.

The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is the first, and to the present date, only, publicly available cryptographic algorithm that has been endorsed by the U.S. govemment. This chapter deals with the past and future of the DES. It discusses the forces leading to the development of the standard during the early 1970s, the controversy regarding the proposed standard during the mid-1970s, the growing acceptance and use of the standard in the 1980s, and some recent developments that could affect the future of the standard.