FIPS is the Federal Information Processing Standard, a suite of several documented standards that specify how electronic information shall be stored, processed and protected within the framework of government-operated information and computing systems. The FIPS documents are managed jointly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U.S. and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada. In the U.S., the publications exist under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Specifically, the FIPS 140-2 publication describes requirements for design, implementation and testing of “cryptographic modules.” FIPS 140-2 describes approved encryption algorithms, requirements to secure and attest to the authenticity of SSD firmware, requirements to authenticate user identities with regard to their role or identity, and the creation, management and protection of encryption keys and passcodes. FIPS 140-2 also describes how a storage device must interact with other components of a compute or data storage system. Many of the requirements for TCG Security Subsystem Class (SSC) Opal and SSC Enterprise are incorporated into the FIPS requirement, so TCG drives are often the first step toward FIPS validation.
