The Transition to Advanced Encryption Standard

The Federal Partnership for Interoperable Communications (FPIC) has released “Transition to Advanced Encryption Standard (AES),” a white paper to be used by public safety agencies to better understand the vulnerabilities to sensitive information from continued use of the Data Encryption Standard and nonstandard algorithms. It provides:

• An overview of actions and next steps being taken to support state, local, tribal and territorial agencies in the transition to AES capabilities.
• Background information on the Criminal Justice Information Service (CJIS) Policy and the Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program.
• Background information about CJIS policies and resources, like the PCII Program, to better protect critical infrastructure and information.

The FPIC is a Technical Advisory Resource to the Emergency Communications Preparedness Center Steering Committee and has a collaborative relationship with the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency’s SAFECOM-National Council of Statewide Interoperability Coordinators Joint Technology Policy Committee.

The FPIC’s mission is to address communications interoperability among the public safety community at all levels of government to foster intergovernmental cooperation and identify and leverage common synergies. More about FPIC, Encryption in P25, and the P25, can be found at https://www.cisa.gov/safecom/fpic.