Part of state and federal requirements on securing data. The SHA works in conjunction with the System Security Plan (SSP). SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm) is a National Security Agency designed hash function used to secure data. The call out in the narrative of the SSP is to ensure that the system architect ensures that the version of SHA meets or exceeds current cryptographic security standards. SHA is a family of cryptographic hash functions published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)