Abstract: | The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is working with industry, academia and the cryptographic community to replace the Data Encryption Standard (DES). The new algorithm will be called the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and the goal is to develop a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) that specifies the encryption algorithm(s) capable of protecting sensitive but unclassified information well into the 21st century.1 It is expected that the AES will be used by the US Government and, on a voluntary basis, by the private sector.1 |