According to the latest HP (Hewlett-Packard) press release it seems that the famous world's largest information technology corporation has recently earned the Top International Linux Security Certification. The certification, called the Evaluation Assurance Level 4 Common Criteriasecurity certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, applies to HP servers, workstations and notebooks.

The above mentioned award is actually part of the Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme standard, which is well known especially among governments and businesses who use it for determining the security and assurance level of the IT products. According to the press release, HP worked with Red Hat and the Linux community to develop the features required for the EAL4+ certification and it managed to succeed in areas such as Labeled Security Protection Profile, Controlled Access Protection Profile and Role-Based Access Control Protection Profile for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 on HP Integrity, ProLiant and BladeSystem platforms as well as select workstations and desktops.

Thomas Rooney, president and founder of eXMeritus Software, stated they have also been working with HP in order to port its application from Solaris operating system to Linux. He also mentioned that:

"The combination of HP hardware and Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides us the performance, reliability and security we require to implement cross-domain solutions for the defense and intelligence communities. The recent certifications allow us to implement our highest-security systems on a much broader range of hardware, increasing performance at an overall reduced total cost of ownership."

Tom Hempfield, vice president, Federal Business Organization, HP said that the company's priority would be to "ensure that customers can turn to HP for the necessary tools and expertise to deploy commercial and open source solutions at maximum security levels."