Evaluation Assurance Level
Fleeting- External reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation_Assurance_Level
Evaluation Assurance Level - Wikipedia
Assurance levels
EAL1: Functionally Tested
EAL1 is applicable where some confidence in correct operation is required, but the threats to security are not viewed as serious. It will be of value where independent assurance is required to support the contention that due care has been exercised with respect to the protection of personal or similar information. EAL1 provides an evaluation of the TOE (Target of Evaluation) as made available to the customer, including independent testing against a specification, and an examination of the guidance documentation provided. It is intended that an EAL1 evaluation could be successfully conducted without assistance from the developer of the TOE, and for minimal cost. An evaluation at this level should provide evidence that the TOE functions in a manner consistent with its documentation, and that it provides useful protection against identified threats.
EAL2: Structurally Tested
EAL2 requires the cooperation of the developer in terms of the delivery of design information and test results, but should not demand more effort on the part of the developer than is consistent with good commercial practice. As such it should not require a substantially increased investment of cost or time. EAL2 is therefore applicable in those circumstances where developers or users require a low to moderate level of independently assured security in the absence of ready availability of the complete development record. Such a situation may arise when securing legacy systems.
EAL3: Methodically Tested and Checked
EAL3 permits a conscientious developer to gain maximum assurance from positive security engineering at the design stage without substantial alteration of existing sound development practices. EAL3 is applicable in those circumstances where developers or users require a moderate level of independently assured security, and require a thorough investigation of the TOE and its development without substantial re-engineering.
EAL4: Methodically Designed, Tested and Reviewed
EAL4 permits a developer to gain maximum assurance from positive security engineering based on good commercial development practices which, though rigorous, do not require substantial specialist knowledge, skills, and other resources. EAL4 is the highest level at which it is likely to be economically feasible to retrofit to an existing product line. EAL4 is therefore applicable in those circumstances where developers or users require a moderate to high level of independently assured security in conventional commodity TOEs and are prepared to incur additional security-specific engineering costs.
Commercial operating systems that provide conventional, user-based security features are typically evaluated at EAL4. Examples of such operating systems are AIX,[1] HP-UX,[1] Oracle Linux, NetWare, Solaris,[1] SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9,[1][2] SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10,[3] Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5,[4][5] Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, Windows 2003,[1][6] Windows XP,[1][6] Windows Vista,[7][8] Windows 7,[1][9] Windows Server 2008 R2,[1][9] macOS Mojave 10.14 Catalina 10.15, z/OS version 2.1 and z/VM version 6.3.[1]
Operating systems that provide multilevel security are evaluated at a minimum of EAL4. Examples include Trusted Solaris, Solaris 10 Release 11/06 Trusted Extensions,[10] an early version of the XTS-400, VMware ESXi version 4.1,[11] 3.5, 4.0, AIX 4.3, AIX 5L, AIX 6, AIX7, Red Hat 6.2 & SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (EAL 4+). vSphere 5.5 Update 2 did not achieve EAL4+ level it was an EAL2+ and certified on June 30, 2015.
EAL5: Semiformally Designed and Tested
EAL5 permits a developer to gain maximum assurance from security engineering based upon rigorous commercial development practices supported by moderate application of specialist security engineering techniques. Such a TOE will probably be designed and developed with the intent of achieving EAL5 assurance. It is likely that the additional costs attributable to the EAL5 requirements, relative to rigorous development without the application of specialized techniques, will not be large. EAL5 is therefore applicable in those circumstances where developers or users require a high level of independently assured security in a planned development and require a rigorous development approach without incurring unreasonable costs attributable to specialist security engineering techniques.
Numerous smart card devices have been evaluated at EAL5, as have multilevel secure devices such as the Tenix Interactive Link. XTS-400 (STOP 6) is a general-purpose operating system which has been evaluated at EAL5 augmented.
LPAR on IBM System z is EAL5 Certified.[12]
EAL6: Semiformally Verified Design and Tested
EAL6 permits developers to gain high assurance from application of security engineering techniques to a rigorous development environment in order to produce a premium TOE for protecting high-value assets against significant risks. EAL6 is therefore applicable to the development of security TOEs for application in high risk situations where the value of the protected assets justifies the additional costs.
Green Hills Software’s INTEGRITY-178B RTOS has been certified to EAL6 augmented.[1]
EAL7: Formally Verified Design and Tested
EAL7 is applicable to the development of security TOEs for application in extremely high risk situations and/or where the high value of the assets justifies the higher costs.
Practical application of EAL7 is currently limited to TOEs with tightly focused security functionality that is amenable to extensive formal analysis. The Tenix Interactive Link Data Diode Device and the Fox-IT Fox Data Diode (one-way data communications device) claimed to have been evaluated at EAL7 augmented (EAL7+).[13]