National Information Assurance Partnership

A joint initiative of NIST and NSA to enhance the quality of commercial products for information security and increase consumer confidence in those products through objective evaluation and testing methods.

Tutorial: NIAP is registered, through the U.S. DoD, as a National Performance Review Reinvention Laboratory. NIAP functions include the following:

• Developing tests, test methods, and other tools that developers and testing laboratories may use to improve and evaluate security products.
• Collaborating with industry and others on research and testing programs.
• Using the Common Criteria to develop protection profiles and associated test sets for security products and systems.
• Cooperating with the NIST National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program to develop a program to accredit private- sector laboratories for the testing of information security products using the Common Criteria.
• Working to establish a formal, international mutual recognition scheme for a Common Criteria-based evaluation.