FIPS

The Federal Information Processing Standard is a cryptography-focused certification standard for U.S. Government usage.

Hashicorp's Vault Enterprise supports the modes of FIPS compliance documented below.

FIPS 140-2 inside

Vault Enterprise now includes release flavors with FIPS 140-2 compliant cryptography built into the Vault binary. More information on these releases can be found on the FIPS 140-2 Inside page.

Seal wrap

Before our FIPS Inside effort, Vault depended on an external HSM for FIPS 140-2 compliance. This uses the Seal Wrap functionality to wrap security relevant keys in an extra layer of encryption.