At 09:15 AM 1/7/2003 -0500, Frederick M Avolio wrote:

>>Outside Government and Military circles where I can see Common Criteria
>>Certification being extremely useful, how valuable is it, ie within the
>>financial sector etc ? More importantly what are it's failings?
>
>CAVEAT: My direct knowledge of the CC is about 2 years old. Maybe things
>are better. I doubt it.

[snippage]

 From "National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security
Policy (NSTISSP) No. 11, Subject: National Policy Governing the Acquisition of
Information Assurance (IA) and IA-Enabled Information Technology (IT) Products
is issued by the National Security Telecommunications and Information
Systems Security Committee (NSTISSC)"

http://niap.nist.gov/cc-scheme/nstissp_11.pdf

"Effective 1 January 2001, preference shall be given to the acquisition of
COTS IA and IA-enabled IT products (to be used on systems entering,
processing, storing, displaying, or transmitting national security information)
which have been evaluated and validated, as appropriate, in accordance with:
- The International Common Criteria for Information Security Technology
Evaluation Mutual Recognition Arrangement;
- The National Security Agency (NSA)/National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP)
Evaluation and Validation Program; or
- The NIST Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) validation
program."

and

"By 1 July 2002, the acquisition of all COTS IA and IA-enabled IT products
to be used on the systems specified in paragraph (6), above, shall be limited
only to those which have been evaluated and validated in accordance with the
criteria, schemes, or programs specified in the three sub-bullets."

A clarification to NSTISSP No. 11 is also available at NIST:

http://niap.nist.gov/niap/library/20020215memo.pdf

>Is Common Criteria useful? I don't see how it is.
>
>Fred

If you sell IT security products into the U.S Government, like IDS, firewalls,
or crypto, or a U.S Government purchaser of same, the usefulness of
Common Criteria isn't a debatable topic anymore.

Best regards,

Randy

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