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Is there any security standard published by NIST or another reputed body in information security that explicitly forbids or discourages rolling your own crypto? If yes, would you please post the standard name/title, a link to it, and quote the section that says something to this effect?
Such a document will help me to define information security policies for our organization.
Perhaps you are looking for FIPS 140-2.
The Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 140-2, (FIPS PUB 140-2), is a U.S. government computer security standard used to approve cryptographic modules. The title is Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules. Initial publication was on May 25, 2001 and was last updated December 3, 2002.
FIPS 140-2 establishes the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) as a joint effort by the NIST and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) for the Government of Canada.
The key here is that it defines Validation of acceptable crypto. It does not explicitly forbid roll your own or custom encryption. You are welcome to make your own and submit it for testing. If it achieves FIPS validation then you can use it with justification. Note that FIPS validation is a years long multi-million dollar process, but you certainly can pursue it if you like.
To back track a bit. The phrase "Roll Your Own" may mean the algorithm (see FIPS 140-2), or it may mean implementation of an approved algorithm. Problematic implementation of an approved crypto algorithm is surprisingly easy to do. One trivial example is using the wrong pseudo-random number resource and severely crippling an otherwise strong crypto. Always try to use vetted libraries instead of coding your own. Even then it's not guaranteed.
