Seattle Post-Intelligencer: IBM, SuSE Achieve Security Certification for Linux

“In a step to help the Linux operating system gain popularity
among government and corporate users, IBM and Suse Linux plan to
announce Tuesday they have achieved the government’s security
certification for Linux from the U.S. government, a first for the
free operating system.

“The government, under the direction of the Pentagon’s Defense
Information Security Agency, has revamped its certification
standards process in the last year to improve the security of
computer systems as part of the effort to strengthen domestic
security.

“The program, called Common Criteria Security Certification,
posed a potential hurdle to the use of Linux in government data
centers because such certification programs are costly and
time-consuming. Linux, a variant of the Unix operating system, was
created and improved by a network of programmers who freely share
the code…”

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