Re: Firewalls - ITSEC Rating?

[Christopher Nicholls <cnicholls () securenet com au>]

At 09:42 PM 1/02/2000 +1000, Craig Martin wrote:
> Could someone possibly explain the difference between
> a Firewall that is ITSEC rated and a F/W that is
> not?...Am I correct in saying that Firewall-1 for
> example is not ITSEC rated?...Seems strange.

Craig,

Nothing intrinsically different. The ITSEC-ness of a product does not
indicate necessarily that one with an ITSEC rating it is better than one
that isn't ITSEC rated. Nor does it say that one ITSEC rated firewall is
the same as another, even with the same rating.

The value of an ITSEC-rating is that the purchaser can identify that that
particular firewall has had a set of security claims made/set (the Security
Target) and has been tested agaist a number of criterion for compliance
with those tests. In other words "the firewall does what its manufacturers
claim" - that is all. The various levels 1, 3, 6 etc... are the levels of
"assurance" to which it has been tested - basically anyway.

There are a number of testing authorities around the world - here in
Australia for instance it is the Defence Signals Directorate. Each has
their own list of "approved" or ITSEC-tested products. Gauntlet, Checkpoint
Firewall-1, IBM Firewall, Cisco PIX and CyberGuard are firewalls in this
country that have either been ITSEC rated or are still undergoing testing.
Firewall-1 V.4.0 is ITSEC E3 in the UK and 4.1 is still under evaluation
there too. In Australia 4.0 is still under evaluation...

More info:

UK:             http://www.itsec.gov.uk/
Australia:              http://www.dsd.gov.au/infosec/

You also may wish to check out the Common Criteria scheme as well....

http://csrc.nist.gov/cc/

CC is becoming the new evaluation standard to be adopted by various
countries around the world.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Chris


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Christopher A Nicholls
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