During his time in research management positions in the NSA, he played a key role in promoting a more open and collaborative relationship between the Agency and the broader community of security professionals.

Several cryptographic systems employed by the U.S. government and military have used his algorithms for such purposes as nuclear command and control, tactical voice communications, and network security.

[2]Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes have written that Snow was a strong supporter of the transition from RSA to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) as a public key cryptographic technology:

)[3]Cybersecurity policy expert Susan Landau attributes the NSA's harmonious collaboration with industry and academia in the selection of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in 2000 — and the Agency's support for the choice of a strong encryption algorithm designed by Europeans rather than by Americans — in part to Snow, who represented the NSA as cochairman of the Technical Working Group for the AES competition.

[5]In Snow's last years at the NSA before his retirement in 2006, along with Clinton Brooks he led a group that drew up a draft ethics code for intelligence officers.