documentation_complete: true

title: 'Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)'

description: |-
    The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) is a computer security standard which
    is developed by the U.S. Government and industry working groups to validate the quality
    of cryptographic modules. The FIPS standard provides four security levels to ensure
    adequate coverage of different industries, implementation of cryptographic modules, and
    organizational sizes and requirements.
    <br /><br />
    FIPS 140-2 is the current standard for validating that mechanisms used to access cryptographic modules
    utilize authentication that meets industry and government requirements. For government systems, this allows
    Security Levels 1, 2, 3, or 4 for use on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
    <br /><br />
    See <b><weblink-macro link="http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsFIPS.html" /></b> for more information.
