The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) has at long last received the official stamp of approval which allows it to be used by the US Federal Government. AES represents the fruits of a four-year project by cryptographers to develop a next generation . . .
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) has at long last received the official stamp of approval which allows it to be used by the US Federal Government. AES represents the fruits of a four-year project by cryptographers to develop a next generation encryption standard, and is expected to replace the Data Encryption Standard algorithm which was introduced in 1977.. Products implementing AES are expected to come to market shortly in the private and public sectors, protecting financial transactions and other sensitive data contained on everything from supercomputers to smartcards.

The encryption technique used in AES was selected through a competition organised by the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).