When NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) announced the developers contest for a new encryption algorithm, one of the main terms was that developers must relinquish any intellectual property. This has allowed the new standard to be free. All "candidates" (algorithms) were extensively examined by the world community and on October 2nd, 2000, NIST announced the winners. They were two Belgian cryptographers: Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. Since that time AES has become a world cryptographic standard and is now supported by almost all security applications.