U.S. approves stronger encryption standard
C|Net | at | by Mike
The U.S. Commerce Department has approved a new, stronger data-encryption standard intended to replace an aging standard first adopted in 1977. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is intended to protect both personal and financial data for government and commercial use. It will replace the Data Encryption Standard (DES) adopted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1977 as well as the Triple DES protocol used now. AES supports 128-bit, 192-bit and 256-bit keys, much larger than the 56-bit keys that DES supports.