Encryption Plus Cryptographic Library

FIPS 140-2 Tested and Validated

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Communications Security Establishment of the Government of Canada jointly issued to PC Guardian Technologies (now GuardianEdge) FIPS 140-2 Certificate No. 515.

With this certification, GuardianEdge's encryption products are approved to protect government data that is sensitive but unclassified (SBU).

What Is FIPS 140-2?

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) are developed and maintained for the US government by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). FIPS 140-2 is the specific standard published by NIST that deals with cryptographic modules.

The standard describes the technological requirements for systems that use cryptography to protect unclassified but sensitive information. Only independent, NIST-certified laboratories can evaluate products against the standard and issue certificates of accreditation.

Other Certifications

Leading up to this certification, PC Guardian Technologies (now GuardianEdge) obtained a number of other FIPS certificates, including:

• FIPS Certificate No. 154, which certified the company's Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm;
• FIPS Certificate No. 239, which certified GuardianEdge's implementation of the SHA-1 algorithm;
• FIPS Certificate No. 45, which validated the company's Random Number Generator.

Additionally, in 2003 the US National Information Assurance Partnership awarded a Common Criteria EAL1 certificate to the company's flagship product, Encryption Plus Hard Disk 7.0, and later that year, the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia's national authority for information security certification, also certified Encryption Plus Hard Disk 7.0 for use by government agencies.

Encryption Plus Hard Disk, used to protect data on hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, is now under validation testing for the even more rigorous Common Criteria EAL4.