Yubikey 5 FIPS Series
The Yubikey 5 family in a FIPS validated configuration. For United States federal agencies and regulated industries.
Yubikey 5 FIPS Series
FIPS 140-2 Validated
Validated against FIPS 140-2 by NIST. Required for many United States federal use cases
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Management Application
Vendor provides applications that extend or configure the device
Android management application
Management application runs on Android smartphones with appropriate hardware (NFC, BLE, etc)
MacOS management application
Management application runs on MacOS
Windows management application
Management application runs on Windows
Resident Cryptographic Keys
Supports WebAuthn discoverable resident credentials, the building block of passkeys
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Resident ECDSA keys
Supports ECDSA discoverable keys
Resident ED25519 keys
Supports ED25519 discoverable keys
Stored passwords
Supports stored, static passwords, usually configured with a vendor-specific application
The Yubikey 5 FIPS Series is the same hardware as the standard Yubikey 5 family, configured and validated for FIPS 140-2. It is sold as 5 NFC FIPS, 5C NFC FIPS, 5C FIPS, 5 Nano FIPS, 5C Nano FIPS, and 5Ci FIPS, matching the standard lineup variant for variant.
The FIPS validation under 140-2 carries through May 2026. Yubico has submitted the series for FIPS 140-3 Level 2 validation with Physical Level 3, expected to clear in the second quarter of 2026.
When you actually need this
You need FIPS validation if you are a United States federal agency, a contractor working with one, a healthcare organisation under specific HIPAA configurations, or a financial services firm operating under one of the regulators that has adopted FIPS as a requirement. Most other users do not benefit from the FIPS series and should buy the standard line.
The FIPS series currently runs on firmware 5.4, which means a noticeably smaller discoverable credential capacity than the 5.7 firmware on the standard line. The 5 FIPS series stores around 25 passkeys per key, where the current 5 series stores around 100. If you are operating in a passkey heavy environment, this matters.
EUCLEAK
The 5 FIPS series is in scope for EUCLEAK. Firmware 5.7 contains the fix. See the Yubikey 5 entry for the wider context. Yubico has guidance for FIPS customers about replacement for the affected production runs.