In today's world, both private and public sectors depend upon information technology systems to perform essential and mission-critical functions. In the current environment of increasingly open and interconnected systems and networks, network and data security are essential for the optimum use of this information technology. For example, systems that carry out electronic financial transactions and electronic commerce must protect against unauthorized access to confidential records and unauthorized modification of data. The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to Federal agencies on how to select cryptographic controls for protecting Sensitive Unclassified1 information. This document focuses on Federal standards documented in Federal Information Processing Standards Publications (FIPS PUBs) and the cryptographic modules and algorithms that are validated against these standards. However, to provide additional information, other standards organizations, (e.g., American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO)) are briefly discussed.
