FIRST APPROVAL OF EVALUATION FACILITIES UNDER JAPANESE IT SECURITY EVALUATION AND CERTIFICATION SCHEME

NITE (National Institute of Technology and Evaluation) approved two organizations as evaluation facilities to perform security evaluation for IT products and systems on December 20th. This is the first approval of evaluation facilities under the Japanese IT security evaluation and certification scheme based on ISO/IEC 15408 and CC (Common Criteria).
These two organizations were accredited by the ASNITE subprogram for testing information technology laboratories on December 19th.

1. Objective and Background

In order to develop a secure and reliable e-Government, it was agreed that governmental procurement of IT products should consider IT security capability and follow the "Policy to Utilize Security-Enhanced IT Products for the Procurement of Governmental Ministries", and also that the infrastructure of the IT security evaluation and certification scheme should be established, as core projects in the e-Japan Priority Policy. To realize this objective, METI commissioned NITE to establish the Japanese IT security evaluation and certification scheme. The scheme was established in April, 2001, and began operation in December, 2001.

2. Evaluation Facilities

The accredited and approved evaluation facilities are as follows:

JEITA (Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association) IT Security Center
Address: 3-11 Kandasurugadai, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Tel: +81-3-3518-6419
Fax: +81-3-3295-8731
Test Methods: APE, ASE, EAL1, EAL2 and EAL3

ECSEC (Electronic Commerce Security Technology Research Association) Research Laboratory
Address: 90-6 Kawakami-cho, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama
Tel: +81-45-829-2881
Fax: +81-45-829-2885
Test Methods: APE, ASE, EAL1, EAL2 and EAL3

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