FIPS 140
The Federal Information Processing Standard 140 (FIPS) are series of publications numbered 140 which are a U.S. government computer security standards that specify requirements for cryptography modules. As of December 2006[update], the current version of the standard is FIPS 140-2, issued on 25 May 2001. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued the 140 Publication Series to coordinate the requirements and standards for cryptographic modules which include both hardware and software components for use by departments and agencies of the United States federal government. FIPS 140 does not purport to provide sufficient conditions to guarantee that a module conforming to its requirements is secure, still less that a system built using such modules is secure. The requirements cover not only the cryptographic modules themselves but also their documentation and (at the highest security level) some aspects of the comments contained in the source code.
