FIPS

FIPS, abbreviation for "Federal Information Processing Standard". FIPS are standards promulgated by the US Federal government for use by all (non-military) US government agencies and US government contractors, for information technology. Most FIPS standards are modified versions of standards used in the wider community (ANSI, IEEE, ISO etc.) There are also some FIPS standards originally developed by the US government, mostly standards for encoding data (e.g. country codes), but also DES encryption.