Red Hat Achieves Top Security Certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – November 5, 2012 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, including the KVM hypervisor, has been awarded the Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+ – the highest level of assurance for an unmodified commercial operating system – for the Operating System Protection Profile (OSPP) including extended modules for Advanced Management, Advanced Audit, Labeled Security, and Virtualization for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 on Dell, HP, IBM and SGI hardware.

The Common Criteria is an internationally recognized set of standards used by the federal government and other organizations to assess the security and assurance of technology products. In the Common Criteria scheme, EAL represents the depth and rigor of the evaluation, giving consumers the confidence that products specified at a specific level meet the package of security assurance requirements associated with that level.

This certification provides government agencies, financial institutions, and customers in other security-sensitive environments the assurance that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 meets government security standards. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 features Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux), a joint project developed with the National Security Agency (NSA). This Common Criteria certification provides assurance that using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 with the KVM hypervisor allows providers to host many tenants on the same machine while keeping their virtual guests separated from each other using Mandatory Access Control technology developed by the NSA.

Red Hat worked extensively with Dell, HP, IBM and SGI to certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 on a broad spectrum of hardware. As part of this certification effort, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 has achieved Common Criteria Certification on the following hardware:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 with virtualization support:
Dell based on x86 64bit Intel:
Dell PowerEdge R720, R620, R820, R520, R320, R420
Dell PowerEdge T620, T420, T320
Dell PowerEdge M620, M520, M420, M820
HP based on x86 64bit Intel Xeon processors:
HP Proliant ML 100 and 300 series G6 product line
HP Proliant DL 100 series G6, 300 series G6 and G7, 500 series G7, 900 series G7 product line
HP ProLiant BL 200 series G6 and G7, 400 series G6 and G7, 600 series G5, 600 series G7 product line
HP ProLiant SL 100 series G6 product line
HP based on AMD64 processors:
HP Proliant DL 100 series G7, 500 series G7, 700 series G6 product line
HP ProLiant BL 600 series G6 product line
HP ProLiant SL 100 series G7 product line
IBM based on x86 64bit Intel Xeon processors:
IBM System x: x3400 M2, x3400 M3, x3500 M2, x3500 M3, x3550 M2, x3550 M3, x3620 M3, x3630 M3, x3650 M2, x3650 M3
IBM BladeCenter: HS22 and HS22V
IBM iDataPlex: dx360 M2, dx360 M3
IBM X5 systems: x3850 X5, x3950 X5, x3690 X5
SGI based on x86 64bit Intel Xeon processors:
SGI® UV™ 1000, SGI® UV™ 100
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 without virtualization support:
All hardware listed above under “Red Hat Enterprise Linux with virtualization support”
IBM Power Systems based on POWER7 processors
IBM System z based on z/Architecture processors

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 was certified by BSI, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security. To facilitate this certification, Red Hat worked with atsec information security, a U.S. government and BSI accredited laboratory, which tested and validated the security, performance and reliability of the solution against the Common Criteria Standard for Information Security Evaluation (ISO/IEC 15408) at EAL4+, the highest level of assurance for an unmodified commercial operating system, for the Operating System Protection Profile (OSPP) including extended modules for Advanced Management, Advanced Audit, Labeled Security, and Virtualization for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 on Dell, HP, IBM and SGI hardware.

Supporting Quotations:
Paul Smith, vice president and general manager, Public Sector operations, Red Hat
“This is marks our 15th completed Common Criteria certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, earning Red Hat a place at the top of the list of the industry’s most certified operating systems. We’ve been deeply committed to security certifications so that customers can confidently turn to Red Hat for the expertise to deploy open source solutions at maximum security levels, and our work with Dell, HP, IBM and SGI on this certification reinforces that government customers can run Red Hat Enterprise Linux with confidence on a wide variety of hardware from many of the industry’s top providers.”

Tim Mattox, Vice President Enterprise Product Marketing, Dell
“Dell is committed to helping its government customers operate more efficiently and effectively, especially in today’s difficult budget environment. With Red Hat earning common criteria security certification, we can now offer a larger subset of our government customers a powerful tool in Dell’s 12th Generation of PowerEdge Servers to help them accomplish their mission while also helping them to comply with data center consolidation initiatives now in place as well as increasing budget demands. With these powerful solutions, Dell’s government customers can now meet the stringent security requirements needed to help organizations protect their security sensitive environments while still delivering business results.”

Tom Hempfield, vice president, Federal Business Organization, HP
“To accomplish their missions, federal agencies rely on computer systems that deliver a high level of security and reliability. This certification of the entire HP ProLiant product line demonstrates HP’s commitment to helping Red Hat Enterprise Linux meet the risk management needs of their agency clients.”

Jim Brinker, vice president, SGI Federal
“SGI UV is the largest server certified with Common Criteria certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the KVM hypervisor. The server certification supports up to 1280 cores and 8 TB of memory. SGI UV is installed in many government programs and SGI is pleased to offer, with Red Hat’s support, a secure platform for our federal customers.”

Ken Hake, Common Criteria laboratory manager, atsec U.S.
“We are proud that Red Hat chose atsec as the laboratory for the Common Criteria evaluation, as this project continues our successful business relationship with Red Hat. Red Hat’s completion of this Common Criteria project should result in more peace of mind for customers who run Red Hat Enterprise Linux in business critical environments.”

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.

Red Hat and JBoss are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.

Media Contact:
Colin Saldanha
PROCRE8 for Red Hat
Tel: +97150 6400762
Email: colin@procre8.biz

This release was published on openPR.