About The Database

NIAP INTERPRETATIONS

One of the responsibilities of the NIAP Interpretations Board (NIB) is the development of NIAP interpretations (NIs) of the Common Criteria (CC) and the Common Evaluation Methodology (CEM). The sources of NIs include (1) issues that are raised from interim decisions produced by CCEVS for individual evaluations (called Observation Decisions), and (2) sections of the CC and CEM that the NIB has found to be confusing based on its review during NIB meetings. As part of the NI development process, the NIB distributes the proposed NIs for public review and comment.

POSTING INFORMATION

The following describes each section of a proposed NI posting:

NUMBER

The Interpretations Board maintains a database of the CC-related and CEM-related issues that it is investigating. Whenever the Interpretations Board identifies a new issue, that issue is assigned a number of the form "I-nnnn" and added to the database. Interpretations Board members develop NIs from the issues in the database. The "I-nnnn" number associated with an NI is the number of the associated issue in the database.

Note that the order in which the Interpretations Board works on database entries is not the same as the order in which issues are added to the NIB database. Consequently, the "I-nnnn" numbers of proposed NIs posted on this list will not necessarily be in sequential order.

Approved NIs (and other publicly available NIB database entries) are available here

STATUS

Each entry in the database is assigned a status that indicates the proposed NI's progress through the NI development process.

When a database entry is ready for public review, it is assigned a status of "Posted for External Review" and posted to the cc-cmt mailing list. Thereafter, it remains publicly viewable, although its status may change to one indicating that the database entry is undergoing revision or a new review, that it has become a NIAP interpretation, or that it has been superseded, rescinded, withdrawn, or tabled.

TYPE

There are two types of interpretations that will be posted for public review: NIAP Interpretations (discussed above) and Requests for Interpretation.

Sometimes a CC or CEM issue is identified that the Interpretations Board is unable to resolve through an NI. In this case, the Interpretations Board will submit a Request for Interpretation (RI) to the Common Criteria Interpretation Management Board (CCIMB), the international body responsible for CC and CEM interpretations. Similarly to NIs, the Interpretations Board will post RIs to this list for public review and comment prior to submitting them to the CCIMB.

TITLE

This entry provides the title of the proposed NI (or RI).

COMMENTS DUE DATE

This section indicates the date by which the Interpretations Board will accept public comments for the posting. This date is usually a few days prior to the Interpretations Board's next meeting. Readers of the list should provide their comments by this date so that the Interpretations Board can consider them during its meeting.

If a public reviewer wishes to make a comment privately, it should be mailed to "ccevs-nib@nist.gov" in a form suitable for the Interpretations Board to post as an anonymous comment to the list at large.

SOURCE REFERENCE

Citations of the Common Criteria and/or the Common Evaluation Methodology (CEM) sections affected by, or related to, this proposed NI or RI.

RELATED TO

This entry identifies other Interpretations Board database entries related to the proposed NI.

ISSUE

This section provides a short and succinct statement of the issue.

STATEMENT OF INTERPRETATION

This section provides a high-level statement of the proposed NI.

SPECIFIC INTERPRETATION

This section describes the specific changes to be made to the source criteria (i.e., CC and/or CEM) to address the NIAP interpretation. These changes to the source criteria may result in modifications to existing CC classes, CC families, CC components, CC elements, CC EALs and/or CEM work units; or they may result in the addition of new CC classes, CC families, CC components, CC elements, CC EALs, and/or CEM work units.

To clarify the CC or CEM sections that have been modified or to which new information has been added, the Interpretations Board has developed a labeling convention. A description of the labeling convention is available at the following URL: