Phase 1 included a general analysis of all submissions with the purpose of selecting a subset of the submitted designs for further scrutiny. The designs were scrutinized based on criteria of security, performance (with respect to the block cipher AES -- a US Government approved standard, as well as the other candidates), simplicity and flexibility, justification and supporting analysis, and clarity and completeness of the documentation. Submissions in Profile 1 were only accepted if they demonstrated software performance superior to AES-128 in counter mode.