SecureData (FIX tag 91)

dataFIX 4.4FIX 4.2session envelope

SecureData (tag 91) is a data field defined in FIX 4.4 and FIX 4.2. It belongs to the session envelope: every FIX 4.4 message carries it, so it identifies the session rather than describing the business event. It is length-prefixed — tag 90 carries the byte count, so the value may contain the SOH separator without breaking the message.

At a glance

Tag
91
Name
SecureData
Datatype
data
Dialects
FIX 4.4 and FIX 4.2
Messages
93
Length field
tag 90

What the specification says

Actual encrypted data stream

Descriptions are quoted from the FIX Orchestra sources under the Apache 2.0 licence.

A real message using tag 91

NewOrderSingle · FIX 4.4
TagFieldWire valueMeaning
8BeginStringFIX.4.4
9BodyLength127
35MsgTypeDOrder – Single
49SenderCompIDBOARTEAM
56TargetCompIDCOUNTERPARTY
90SecureDataLen7
91SecureDataEXAMPLE
34MsgSeqNum2
52SendingTime20240101-12:00:00.000
11ClOrdIDORD-10042
54Side1Buy
60TransactTime20240101-12:00:00.000
40OrdType1Market
10CheckSum137
Edit and decode it yourself

Shown with | separators for readability. On the wire FIX uses SOH (0x01), an invisible control byte — and because BodyLength and CheckSum are computed over the actual bytes, the two forms have different checksums. Both are valid and both decode here.

Open in the full decoder →

Generated from the FIX 4.4 dictionary and verified at build time: it parses and validates with no issues. Open the decoder to try your own message.

Where tag 91 appears

Session envelope field
Tag 91 appears in every one of the 93 FIX 4.4 message types, because it is part of the standard header or trailer. Listing them all would say nothing useful — it is present on anything you will ever decode.

Wire format

Raw bytes, length-prefixed by a partner field. The value may legally contain the SOH separator, which is why the length matters. @boarteam/fix reads the partner length field first and takes exactly that many bytes, so an embedded separator does not truncate the value.

Read tag 91 in TypeScript

decode.tsts
import { createFixEngine } from "@boarteam/fix";import { dictionary } from "@boarteam/fix-dict-fix44";const fix = createFixEngine(dictionary);const { message, issues } = fix.parse(raw);// Length-prefixed: tag 90 carries the byte count, so the// value may contain the SOH separator without breaking the message.const length = message.fields[90]?.value;const secureData = message.fields[91]?.raw;

Other data fields

Decode this in your own code

The same engine that produced the decoded example above is an Apache-2.0 npm package with zero runtime dependencies. It runs in Node and in the browser, and parse() returns problems as data instead of throwing.

npm i @boarteam/fix @boarteam/fix-dict-fix44