NSA Hall of Honor

The Hall of Honor ( German Hall of Honour ) of the National Security Agency (NSA ) was created in 1999 to honor eminent personalities who have distinguished themselves by exceptional pioneering achievements or feats to the American cryptology.

The criteria for inclusion in this Hall of Honor have been aware of the high side. So are the honored outstanding contributions to the development of cryptology in the United States have done or have worked over the entire period of their professional lives through continuous innovations in the field of cryptology. Particularly evident with the high expectations is the motto of the Hall of Honor: "These Were The Giants " (Eng. These were the giants ).

In the early days of American cryptology history contributed many of these " giants " outstanding valuable contributions in two important branches of cryptology, namely both of cryptography, so the safety of their own secret communications against unauthorized decryption, as well as in the field of cryptanalysis, ie the obtaining information from encrypted foreign news. This is also known as defensive and offensive cryptology. The first " giant " who received their place in the Hall of Honor, made ​​contributions to both the defensive and offensive as cryptology.

Since 1999, some personalities of American cryptology history be inducted into the Hall of Honor each year. This is mostly to help U.S. Kryptologinnen or cryptographer. Among the first were William Friedman and his wife Elizebeth Friedman and Frank Rowlett, Abraham Sinkov, Solomon Kullback and Agnes Meyer Driscoll. The first non - American was the British Brigadier John Tiltman in 2004.