"Recently, NIST announced its selection for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in a report available at http://www.nist.gov/​aes/​, and this selection for the AES has now been described in detail in a Draft Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the AES. The Draft FIPS for the AES specifies technology that can be used to protect the confidentiality of sensitive (unclassified) electronic information. The AES specification will provide a FIPS-approved encryption algorithm in addition to the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (“Triple DES”), which is specified in FIPS 46-3.

NIST invites public comments on the Draft FIPS for the AES. After the comment period closes, NIST will analyze the comments, make changes to the document, as appropriate, and then propose the draft standard to the Secretary of Commerce for approval as a FIPS."