Enabling FIPS Mode for SSL (HTTPS and FTPS) Connections

After you enable or disable FIPS mode, you must restart the EFT server service. (You must have a Server administrator account in EFT to perform this procedure.)

To enable FIPS mode for SSL Connections

  1. In the administration interface, connect to EFT and click the Server tab.

  2. On the Server tab, click the Server node on which you want to enable FIPS mode.

  3. In the right pane, click the Security tab.

  4. In the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) area, select the Use FIPS certified cryptographic libraries for SSH connections check box.

  5. Click Apply to save the changes on EFT.

When the EFT Site is started, if FIPS is enabled, a message displays the protocols in use and which of the protocols in use are FIPS certified. When you enable FIPS, the ciphers, key, and hash lengths/types that are not FIPS-approved are not available. If a FIPS-approved state cannot be achieved when FIPS is enabled, all Sites will stop, and an error is written to the Windows Event Log.

Imported certificates that were signed using non-FIPS-certified algorithms will not work in EFT when using FIPS mode. For details of converting certificates prior to importing them into EFT, refer to Using OpenSSL to Generate/Convert Keys and Certificates.