FIPS Compliance

”An unexpected error has occured”

SharePoint is not at all friendly with FIPS. Recently I faced this issue at my customer's place. I have tried all possible ways to get my site running and I ended up with the below issue. 

“An exception occurred when trying to issue security token: This implementation is not part of the Windows Platform FIPS validated cryptographic algorithms.

Checked the current status of FIPS.

I have never faced this issue in my development environment so far. I had to dig up and found what it really is. 

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) are publicly announced standards developed by the United States federal government for use in computer systems by non-military government agencies and government contractors.

FIPS standards are issued to establish requirements for various purposes such as ensuring computer security and interoperability, and are intended for cases in which suitable industry standards do not already exist.

Solution

SharePoint does not work with FIPS and this should be disabled.

1. Start the Group Policy Object Editor tool (gpedit.msc).
2. In the console tree, expand Computer Configuration, expand Windows Settings, expand Security Settings, expand Local Policies, and then select Security Options.
3. In the right pane, double-click System cryptography: Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing, and signing.
4. In the dialog box that opens, select Disabled and click OK.
5. Restart the computer.

Cheers :)