Announcing Proposed Withdrawal of Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the Data Encryption Standard (DES) and Request for Comments
July 26, 2004

"The Data Encryption Standard (DES), currently specified in Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 46-3, was evaluated pursuant to its scheduled review. At the conclusion of this review, NIST determined that the strength of the DES algorithm is no longer sufficient to adequately protect Federal government information. As a result, NIST proposes to withdraw FIPS 46-3, and the associated FIPS 74 and FIPS 81.

Future use of DES by Federal agencies is to be permitted only as a component function of the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (TDEA). TDEA may be used for the protection of Federal information; however, NIST encourages agencies to implement the faster and stronger algorithm specified by FIPS 197, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instead. NIST proposes issuing TDEA implementation guidance as a NIST Recommendation via its “Special Publication” series (rather than as a FIPS) as Special Publication 800-67, Recommendation for Implementation of the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (TDEA)."