--- title: "Monitor highly regulated workloads with Datadog’s FIPS-enabled Agent" description: "Learn how Datadog automatically encrypts Agent payloads based on the Federal Information Protection Standard." author: "Geoffrey Carlisle" date: 2023-12-11 tags: ["datadog agent", "fedramp"] blog_type_id: the-monitor locale: en --- Protecting sensitive data from the threat of exposure is a non-negotiable business imperative for organizations, especially those in highly regulated sectors like government and healthcare. To help organizations keep their data secure, the [National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)](https://www.nist.gov/) developed a set of requirements for the hardware and software components responsible for data encryption. Known as the [Federal Information Protection Standard (FIPS)](https://www.nist.gov/standardsgov/compliance-faqs-federal-information-processing-standards-fips), these rules require organizations to use compliant cryptographic algorithms, key management, and authentication controls for storing and processing sensitive data. ## Automatically encrypt Datadog Agent payloads based on FIPS standards FIPS compliance is a critical piece of building environments that are certified by [Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP®)](https://www.fedramp.gov/) standards. In addition to achieving [FedRAMP Class D (High) certification](https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/datadog-achieves-fedramp-high-certification.md), Datadog offers the [FIPS Agent](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/configuration/fips-compliance.md). Using the [FIPS 140-2 validated Cryptographic Module](https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/cryptographic-module-validation-program/certificate/4282), the FIPS Agent automatically encrypts payloads with compliant ciphers before forwarding the encrypted payloads to Datadog. This enhanced capability for the [Datadog Agent](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent.md) is FedRAMP Class D (High)–certified and helps ensure that you are securely monitoring your cloud infrastructure according to FIPS standards. As with the standard Datadog Agent, you can view detailed logs about traffic passing through the FIPS Agent. ![A log for the FIPS-enabled Agent](https://web-assets.dd-static.net/42588/1776293882-datadog-fips-enabled-agent-fips-agent-log.png) [Check out our documentation](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/configuration/fips-compliance.md?tab=linux#installation) to learn how to install the FIPS Agent for your hosts. ## Start using the FIPS Agent With our FedRAMP Class D (High) certification and FIPS Agent, Datadog is committed to helping you maintain environments that are compliant with NIST and FedRAMP standards. For more information, [read our documentation about FIPS compliance](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/configuration/fips-compliance.md). If you don't already have a Datadog account, you can .