The Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) of the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
are a set of publicly announced
standards that the
National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
(NIST) has developed for use in computer systems of non-military, American government agencies and contractors.
FIPS standards establish requirements for ensuring computer security and interoperability, and are intended for cases in which suitable industry standards do not already exist.
Many FIPS specifications are modified versions of standards the technical communities use, such as the
American National Standards Institute
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...
(ANSI), the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
(IEEE), and the
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
(ISO).
Specific areas of FIPS standardization
The U.S. government has developed various FIPS specifications to standardize a number of topics including:
* Codes, e.g.,
FIPS county code
The Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 6-4 (FIPS 6-4) is a five-digit Federal Information Processing Standards code which uniquely identified counties and county equivalents in the United States, certain U.S. possessions, and certa ...
s or codes to indicate weather conditions or emergency indications. In 1994,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
(NOAA) began broadcasting FIPS codes along with their standard weather broadcasts from local stations. These codes identify the type of emergency and the specific geographic area, such as a county, affected by the emergency.
* Encryption standards, such as
AES (FIPS 197), and its predecessor, the withdrawn
56-bit DES (FIPS 46-3).
Data security standards
Some FIPS standards are related to the security of data processing systems. Some of these include the use of
key escrow systems.
Withdrawal of geographic codes
Some examples of FIPS Codes for geographical areas include FIPS 10-4 for
country codes
Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes ( geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...
or
region codes and FIPS 5-2 for
state codes. These codes were similar to or comparable with, but not the same as,
ISO 3166
ISO 3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions (e.g., ...
, or the
NUTS standard of the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
. In 2002, the
National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
(NIST) withdrew several geographic FIPS code standards, including those for countries (FIPS 10-4),
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...
s (FIPS 5-2), and
counties
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
(
FIPS 6-4
The Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 6-4 (FIPS 6-4) is a five-digit Federal Information Processing Standards code which uniquely identified County (United States), counties and county equivalents in the United States, certain U.S ...
).
These are to be replaced by ISO 3166 and
INCITS
The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), (pronounced "insights"), is an ANSI-accredited standards development organization composed of Information technology developers. It was formerly known as the X3 and NCITS. ...
standards 38 and 31, respectively.
Some of the codes maintain the previous numerical system, particularly for states.
In 2008, NIST withdrew the FIPS 55-3 database.
[ This database included 5-digit numeric place codes for cities, towns, and villages, or other centers of population in the United States. The codes were assigned alphabetically to places within each state, and as a result changed frequently in order to maintain the alphabetical sorting. NIST replaced these codes with the more permanent ]GNIS
The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...
Feature ID, maintained by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names
The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States Secretary of the Interior. The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the federal govern ...
. The GNIS database is the official geographic names repository database for the United States, and is designated the only source of geographic names and locative attributes for use by the agencies of the Federal Government. FIPS 8-6 "Metropolitan Areas" and 9-1 "Congressional Districts of the U.S." were also withdrawn in 2008, to be replaced with INCITS
The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), (pronounced "insights"), is an ANSI-accredited standards development organization composed of Information technology developers. It was formerly known as the X3 and NCITS. ...
standards 454 and 455, respectively.
The U.S. Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...
used FIPS place codes database to identify legal and statistical entities for county subdivisions, places, and American Indian areas, Alaska Native
Alaska Natives (also known as Alaskan Natives, Native Alaskans, Indigenous Alaskans, Aboriginal Alaskans or First Alaskans) are the indigenous peoples of Alaska and include Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a numbe ...
areas, or Hawaiian home lands when they needed to present census data for these areas.
In response to the NIST decision, the Census Bureau is in the process of transitioning over to the GNIS Feature ID, which will be completed after the 2010 Census. Until then, previously issued FIPS place codes, renamed "Census Code," will continue to be used, with the Census bureau assigning new codes as needed for their internal use during the transition.
See also
* Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002
The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA, , ''et seq.'') is a United States federal law enacted in 2002 as Title III of the E-Government Act of 2002 (, ). The act recognized the importance of information security to the eco ...
(FISMA)
* FIPS 137 FIPS 137, originally issued as FED-STD-1015, is a secure telephony speech encoding standard for Linear Predictive Coding vocoder developed by the United States Department of Defense and finished on November 28, 1984.
It was based on the earlier STA ...
(Federal Standard for Linear Predictive Coding
Linear predictive coding (LPC) is a method used mostly in audio signal processing and speech processing for representing the spectral envelope of a digital signal of speech in compressed form, using the information of a linear predictive model. ...
)
* FIPS 140
The 140 series of Federal Information Processing Standards ( FIPS) are U.S. government computer security standards that specify requirements for cryptography modules.
, FIPS 140-2 and FIPS 140-3 are both accepted as current and active. FIPS 140-3 ...
(''Security requirements for cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...
modules'')
* FIPS 153
PHIGS (Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System) is an application programming interface (API) standard for rendering 3D computer graphics, considered to be the 3D graphics standard for the 1980s through the early 1990s. Subsequently, ...
(3D graphics)
* FIPS 197
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael (), is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001.
AES is a variant ...
( Rijndael / AES cipher)
* FIPS 199
FIPS 199 (Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 199, Standards for Security Categorization of Federal Information and Information Systems) is a United States Federal Government
The federal government of the United States (U. ...
(''Standards for Security Categorization of Federal Information and Information Systems'')
* FIPS 201
FIPS 201 (Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 201) is a United States federal government standard that specifies Personal Identity Verification (PIV) requirements for Federal employees and contractors.
In response to HSPD-12, the N ...
(''Personal Identity Verification for Federal Employees and Contractors'')
* List of FIPS region codes
This is a list of FIPS 10-4 region codes, using a standardized name format, and cross-linking to articles. The list is broken up into alphabetical sections.
ABC – DEF – GHI – JKL – MNO – PQR – STU – VWXYZ
On September 2, 20 ...
* List of FIPS state codes
References
External links
*
{{Geocoding-systems
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Security compliance
Standards of the United States
Statistical data coding