About Us

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Security Agency (NSA) have established a program under the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) to evaluate IT product conformance to international standards. The program, officially known as the NIAP Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme for IT Security (CCEVS) is a partnership between the public and private sectors. This program is being implemented to help consumers select commercial off-the-shelf information technology (IT) products that meet their security requirements and to help manufacturers of those products gain acceptance in the global marketplace.

Project Objectives

• To meet the needs of government and industry for cost-effective evaluation of IT products;
• To encourage the formation of commercial security testing laboratories and the development of a private sector security testing industry;
• To ensure that security evaluations of IT products are performed to consistent standards;
• To improve the availability of evaluated IT products.