Blockchain Compliance With Federal Cryptographic Information-Processing Standards

Thursday January 23, 2020

•  blockchain •  computer science •  JHU/APL •  public affairs •  systems science • 

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a bit of time working on blockchain and blockchain-related issues at JHU/APL. Last year, at the request of DHS, Maria Vachino and I looked at how blockchain would work in government programs given the NIST Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS). Our results were published in IEEE Security & Privacy and you can read them here:

Blockchain Compliance With Federal Cryptographic Information-Processing Standards - IEEE Journals & Magazine

Under current Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) requirements, all new federal IT programs and modernization efforts using blockch

The short version is, the Federal government cannot use blockchain until an implementation comes along that is FIPS-compliant. However, the blockchain-like technology, R3 Corda, should be investigated further for government use for immediate needs.