Introduction

You can use the Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall (Forcepoint NGFW) in FIPS mode to comply with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS).

The Forcepoint NGFW solution includes NGFW Engines, Forcepoint NGFW Security Management Center (SMC) server components, and SMC user interface components. The basic SMC components are the Management Server, Log Server, and one or more Management Clients. The Management Client is the user interface for the SMC. You use the Management Client for all configuration and monitoring tasks.

There are two main ways to deploy the SMC:

You can use a Forcepoint NGFW Security Management Center Appliance (SMC Appliance) that ships with a Management Server and a Log Server pre-installed on it.
You can also install the SMC Appliance as a virtual machine on virtualization platforms such as VMware ESX. For more information, see Installing SMC Appliance software on a virtualization platform in the Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall Installation Guide.
You can install the SMC components on Windows or Linux platforms.

In a FIPS environment, you must use NGFW Engines that run on purpose-built Forcepoint NGFW appliances.