You can retrieve information about the current FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) settings of vCenter Server. You can also enable or deactivate the global FIPS compliance.

FIPS 140-2 is a U.S. and Canadian government standard that specifies security requirements for cryptographic modules. vSphere uses FIPS-validated cryptographic modules to match those specified by the FIPS 140-2 standard. The goal of vSphere FIPS support is to ease the compliance and security activities in various regulated environments.

The following table lists the operations that you can perform to manage the FIPS settings of your vCenter Server system.

Table 1. User Operations
Operation Description
Get FIPS status You can check whether the global FIPS compliance is currently enabled on the vCenter Server system.
Manage FIPS status You can enable or deactivate the global FIPS compliance on the vCenter Server system.
Note: When you enable FIPS compliance, some components might present functional constraints. For more information, see vSphere Security.

You can run FIPS management operations by using the vSphere Automation SDK or sending an HTTP request. For information about the HTTP requests that you can use to perform the user operations, see HTTP Requests for Global FIPS Compliance Operations.