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The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 140-2 is a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE) standard for approving cryptographic modules. A FIPS 140-2 certification is granted after the model is tested and validated by the United States and Canadian government agencies.
A FIPS certification is not only required by federal agencies and departments, but now has a global presence as a best practice of security certification. For organizations that store sensitive data, a FIPS certification may be required based on government regulations or industry standards. As companies opt for drives with a FIPS certification, they are ensured that the drives meet stringent regulatory requirements. A FIPS 140-2 certification is provided through the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). The CMVP ensures that products conform to the FIPS 140-2 security requirement.
For more information about FIPS, see FIPS PUB 140-2 Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules. For more information about CMVP, see the page NIST CMVP.
The SEDs in a PowerScale node are validated to ensure that they have been tested by the CMVP and conform to the FIPS 140-2 requirements. A FIPS 140-2 certificate for the SED specifies the drive name and type, as shown in the following figure.
The FIPS certificate for each SED is available for download directly from the NIST CVMP website. For a link to the appropriate NIST page based on a node’s specific SEDs, send an email containing the node serial numbers to powerscale.fips.confirmation@dell.com.
To access a PowerScale node serial numbers, from the OneFS CLI, use the isi_for_array -s isi_hw_status -i command. The serial numbers are listed by each node in the SerNo field.
The email response includes a link directly to the NIST CVMP certificate page of the SED module. Under the Related Files section, click the Consolidated Certificate link to download the FIPS 140-2 certificate.
Note: An email response may take up to five business days, depending on the current queue. If a FIPS certificate is required by a specific date, submit the request email as soon as possible.