SGI, whose Altix servers successfully passed the Common Criteria security evaluation for the Controlled Access Protection Profile (CAPP), announced Feb. 7 that it has received formal recognition for the certification.

A presentation acknowledging the CAPP certification took place yesterday in a ceremony at the annual RSA Conference, the world's leading information security conference and exposition.

The CAPP, a certification applying to operating systems and their associated hardware systems, plays a key role in specifying a set of functional and assurance requirements for IT products. This certification positions SGI among an elite group of computer hardware manufacturers with only two other vendors' systems having passed this stringent evaluation.

"The certification of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on SGI servers reaffirms that SGI Altix is a stable, secure platform ideally suited not just for sensitive government computing environments but commercial industry and research computing environments as well," said Steve Neuner, director of Linux, SGI. "SGI continues to address customers' most challenging data management and analysis problems across a broad range of applications by improving productivity and time to decision for mission-critical environments."

The Common Criteria Security Certification was awarded to SGI by the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), a U.S. Government initiative developed to meet the security testing needs of both IT consumers and producers. The long-term goal of NIAP, which is operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), is to help increase the level of trust consumers have in their information systems and networks through the use of cost-effective security testing, evaluation, and validation programs. ENS