The Ministry of the Interior exchanges confidential data with a number of other services. The political and private sensitivity of this data is an important issue. So the Ministry must consider the public requirement to make this data available to authorized parties quickly and efficiently while protecting the privacy of the citizen and from identity theft etc. The Ministry is using FIPS 140-2 standards to protect this data. FIPS 140-2 is the most recent version of the US Federal Information Processing Standards specify requirements for cryptography modules which include both hardware and software components.

SecureZIP has been implemented by the Ministry of the Interior as part of a security regime for protecting data within computer systems. The current version of FIPS 140-2 was published by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is valid from December 2006. One part of FIPS 140-2 covers the validation. The FIPS 140-2 validation certificate is based on the requirements published by NIST.

How does SecureZIP help meet FIPS 140 2 compliance standards?

SecureZIP by PKWARE fully addresses the standards outlined in FIPS 140-2 by strongly encrypting data to ensure it remains protected at its origin or destination, both in movement or storage. Because SecureZIP encrypts the data itself rather than the storage device, it remains protected even if placed on removable media that is lost or stolen during transit.

SecureZIP offers government agencies the ability to use validated cryptographic modules for protecting data when run in FIPS mode.