ABSTRACT
In the early 1970s, the Data Encryption Standard (DES)
became a Federal Information Processing Standard
(FIPS).[1] Under the Information Technology Management
Reform Act (Public Law 104-106), the Secretary of
Commerce approves standards and guidelines that are devel-
oped by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) for federal computer systems. These standards and
guidelines are issued by NIST as Federal Information
Processing Standards for use government-wide. NIST devel-
ops FIPS when there are compelling federal government
requirements, such as for security and interoperability, and
there are no acceptable industry standards or solutions. This
happened with little fanfare and even less public notice. In
fact, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the notion of the
general public having an influence on U.S. cryptographic
policy was utterly absurd. It should be noted that in the days
before personal computers were ubiquitous, the force of a
FIPS was immense, given the purchasing power of the U.S.
government. Nowadays, the power of a FIPS has a much
lesser effect on the profitability of computer companies given
the strength of the consumer market.
