Chapter 11. Security, Standards and Certification

As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 Beta, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is under evaluation for Common Criteria certification at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+. Common Criteria provides a standardized way of expressing security requirements and defines a set of rigorous criteria by which products are evaluated.

As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 Beta, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 cryptographic modules are under evaluation for FIPS-140 certification. FIPS-140 is a U.S. government security standard used for accrediting cryptographic modules. Red Hat Enterprise Linux now satisfies the regulatory requirement mandated by the U.S. federal government for acceptable use of cryptographic modules by all the governmental agencies.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 includes Intel Trusted Boot, a trusted boot mechanism (provided by the tboot package). Trusted boot is an install-time optional component that allows for Intel's Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) to perform a measured and verified launch of the operating system kernel. Trusted boot is supported on both Intel x86 and Intel 64 architectures.