Protection Profile
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A Protection Profile (PP) is a document used as part of the evaluation process for the Common Criteria (CC). It is typically created by a user or user community which is an implementation independent specification of information assurance security requirements. A PP is a complete combination of security objectives, security related functional requirements, information assurance requirements, assumptions, and rationale.
A PP is one dimension of a two dimensional evaluation criteria used by the CC to substantiate the vendor's claims of secure information system products. The other dimension is the evaluation level (EAL), a number 1 through 7, indicating the assurance provided, usually in the form of supporting documentation and testing, that a product meets the specified PP.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Security Agency (NSA) have agreed to cooperate on the development of validated U.S. government PPs.
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[edit] Purpose
A PP states a security problem rigorously for a given collection of system or products, known as the Target of Evaluation (TOE) and to specify security requirements to address that problem without dictating how these requirements will be implemented.
Product vendors can choose to implement products that comply with one or more PPs, and have their products evaluated against those PPs. In such a case, a PP may serve as a template for the product's Security Target (ST). Product vendors may respond to the security concerns defined by a PP by producing a ST, which is similar to a PP except that it contains implementation-specific information that demonstrate how their product addresses those security concerns.
[edit] Problem Areas
Although the EAL number is easiest for laymen to compare, its simplicity is deceptive because it is rather meaningless without an understanding the security implications of the PP used for the evaluation. Technically, comparing evaluated products requires assessing both the EAL level and the PP. Unfortunately, interpreting the security implications of the PP for the intended application requires such an extreme depth of COMPUSEC expertise that it is inaccessible to all but a few experts. Evaluating a product is one thing, but deciding if some product's CC evaluation is adequate for a particular application is quite another. It is not clear what trusted agency possesses the depth in COMPUSEC expertise needed to evaluate systems applicability of Common Criteria evaluated products.
The problem of applying evaluations is not new. This problem was addressed decades ago by a massive research project that defined software features that could protect information, evaluated their strength, and mapped security features needed for specific operating environment risks. The results were documented in the Rainbow Series. Rather than separating the EAL level and PP, the Orange Book simplified this by paring each level of functional protection capabilities with appropriate assurance requirements as single category. Seven such categories were defined in this way. Further, the Yellow Book defined a matrix of security environments and assessed the risk of each. It then established precisely what security environment was valid for each of the Orange Book categories. This approach produced an unambiguous layman's cookbook for how to determine whether a product was usable in a particular application. Loss of this application technology seems to have been an unintended consequence of the superseding of the Orange Book by the Common Criteria.
[edit] Security devices with PPs
[edit] Validated US Government PP
- Anti-Virus
- Key Recovery
- PKI/KMI
- Biometrics
- Certificate Management
- Tokens
- DBMS
- Firewalls
- Operating System
- IDS/IPS
- Peripheral Switch
[edit] Draft US Government PP
- Switches and Routers
- Biometrics
- Remote Access
- Mobile Code
- Secure Messaging
- Multiple Domain Solutions
- VPN
- Wireless LAN
- Guards
- Single-Level Web Server
[edit] Validated Non-U.S. Government PP
- Smart Cards
