Canada

A city trip between two Canadian capitals: the cobblestone streets of Old Montréal, the train to Ottawa and Parliament Hill. Bonus: a giant spider and a UNESCO-listed canal.

FIPS 140 (Federal Information Processing Standard, Publication 140) is the US and Canadian government standard that defines security requirements for cryptographic modules — the hardware, software, or firmware components that perform cryptographic operations (encryption, decryption, hashing, signing, key management). It is published by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and jointly administered with CCCS (Canadian Centre for Cyber Security) through the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). The standard has two active versions: FIPS 140-2 (published 2001, no longer accepting new submissions since April 2022) and FIPS 140-3 (effective September 2020, the current standard for all new validations). FIPS 140-2 certificates remain valid until 21 September 2026, after which they move to the Historical list — meaning only FIPS 140-3 validated modules will be accepted for new federal procurements. FIPS 140 defines four security levels (Level 1 through Level 4), with Level 1 being the baseline for software modules and Level 4 requiring physical tamper-active hardware. Compliance is mandatory for all US federal agencies and their contractors under FISMA, for Canadian federal systems, and is widely adopted by regulated industries (finance, healthcare, critical infrastructure) globally. Non-validated cryptography is treated as providing no protection — effectively plaintext — regardless of the algorithm strength. Validation is a formal, lab-based process: vendors submit modules to accredited Cryptographic and Security Testing (CST) laboratories, which test against the standard and submit results to CMVP for certificate issuance.