Bangalore: India should adopt the common criteria standard evolved y US and Canada for certification and security evaluation of the trustworthiness of increasing number of commercially available information technology products (CAR) director, has said.

Presenting his paper on 'Information system security assurance and certification, an Indian perspective' at the two-day national seminar on information and network security, he said that the "common criteria" evolved by the US, Canada and some European countries for security evaluation of IT products was adopted by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) as ISO Standard 15408.

These countries signed mutual recognition agreement to recognise each other’s evaluation/certification with the expectation that it would lead to a wider choice of evaluated products for the consumers and a greater market access for the developers, he said.

He said that the information systems used for e-commerce, e-governance and e- marketing and business needed to be secured against data loss, unauthorised use, disclosure or modification.

But since their trustworthiness based on formal evaluation was absent there was an urgent need for certification through a common criteria even as the commercially available IT products were increasing.

He said that India could set up a national certification agency as the trusted agency for issuing common criteria certificates, and encourage establishment and accreditation of Indian evaluation infrastructure in private or public sectors which could function as accredited evaluation centres.

PTI