FIPS images alone won’t ensure compliance. Learn how prebuilt native deps can bypass your crypto boundary—and how to build, test, and ship FIPS-compatible apps.

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FIPS-enabled container images don't guarantee cryptographic compliance across your entire application stack. Prebuilt native dependencies can silently bypass your FIPS crypto boundary by bundling their own OpenSSL or crypto code. A Rails application using the pg gem demonstrated this when ActiveRecord triggered non-FIPS crypto from a precompiled libpq binary. The solution involves forcing compilation from source using flags like force_ruby_platform to ensure dependencies link against your FIPS-validated OpenSSL. Teams need to treat prebuilt binaries as suspect, use multi-stage builds with compilers, test real execution paths beyond basic startup, and budget time for supply-chain debugging to verify the entire dependency graph respects FIPS boundaries.

Your Dependencies Don't Care About Your FIPS Config

The FIPS crypto error that caught us off guard

Why we cannot just fix it in the base image yet

What to do if you are starting a FIPS journey

Why this matters beyond government contracts