Posted On: Nov 20, 2023

Application Load Balancer (ALB) and Network Load Balancer(NLB) now support Transport Layer Security (TLS) policies that uses Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3 certified cryptographic modules to protect sensitive information. FIPS 140-3 is the latest technical standard for cryptographic modules from the U.S. and Canadian Federal governments. ALB/NLB uses AWS-Libcrypto, which is a FIPS 140-3 validated purpose built cryptographic module maintained by AWS that is secure and performant.

To enable this feature, you can simply choose any one of the FIPS enabled predefined TLS security policies for your existing or new load balancer. ALB/NLB will continue to use FIPS enabled policies if you configure TLS encryption for connections between your load balancer and target. Customers can add enforcement across their AWS accounts and AWS Organizations by using the Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) condition keys in IAM policies and Service control policies respectively, such that it restricts users to using FIPS enabled predefined TLS security policies only.

This feature is available in all commercial AWS Regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more, please refer to AWS Libcrypto launch blogALB documentation and NLB documentation

11/22/2023 - Post updated to better explain using IAM policies with FIPS enabled load balancers.