Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 197 (FIPS PUBS), dated November 26, 2001, announced the advanced encryption standard (AES) to the world. AES specifies a FIPS-approved cryptographic algorithm used to protect electronic data. The publication defines it as, “...a symmetric block cipher that can encrypt (encipher) and decrypt (decipher) information....” The U.S. government adopted this standard, and in June 2003, the U.S. government (NSA) announced that AES was secure enough to protect classified information up to the TOP SECRET level.

Different Encryption Strengths

The AES standard uses one of three block ciphers, AES-128, AES-192, and AES-256, that were adopted from a larger collection originally published as Rijndael.