ANSI X 9.73:2017

The high value or sheer volume of such transactions within an open environment exposes the financial community to the risk of potentially severe consequences from accidental or deliberate disclosure, alteration, substitution, or destruction of data. This risk is compounded by interconnected networks, and the increased number and sophistication of malicious adversaries. And when financial transactions involve systemically important payment systems, these consequences may adversely affect national and global financial markets. This Standard defines a cryptographic message syntax which can be used to protect financial transactions and other information from the threats described above. The syntax is easily extensible in design to allow the use of any cryptographic algorithm defined in current or future standards appropriate for use by the financial services. The cryptographic syntax is suitable for the protection of the identity and rights management information critical for secure access control.