If you’re on this turf, chances are you already know that de-NISTing is a technique used in e-discovery and computer forensics to reduce the number of files requiring review by excluding standard components of the computer’s operating system and off-the-shelf software applications like Word, Excel and other parts of Microsoft Office.  Everyone has this  digital detritus on their systems; things like Windows screen saver images, document templates, clip art, system sound files and so forth.  It’s the stuff that comes straight off the installation disks, and it’s just noise to a document review.

It’s called “de-NISTing” because those noise files are identified by matching their hash values (i.e., digital fingerprints) to a huge list of software hash values maintained and published by the National Software Reference Library, a branch of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).  The NIST list is free to download, and pretty much everyone who processes data for e-discovery and computer forensic examination uses it.  If you’re paying a vendor to de-NIST, you probably think you’re getting value for the service.  I expect nearly everybody who de-NISTs believes that they’re culling the most common operating system and application files.  I mean, that’s the whole point, right?

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