Wind River Linux Secure, a secure embedded Linux, is in evaluation by the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) to be certified to Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL4+), conforming to the General Purpose Operating System Protection Profile.

In addition, Wind River Linux Secure is officially listed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology as a cryptographic module accepted for evaluation to the FIPS 140-2 standard.

Upon certification completion to Common Criteria EAL4+, Wind River Linux Secure is expected to be the first commercial embedded Linux operating system accepted by NIAP, enabling Linux to be deployed securely on hardware from multiple vendors, including Freescale, Intel, and Texas Instruments Incorporated.

The certified open standards platform, with full traceability to source code for all Linux modules, will provide greater flexibility, interoperability and transparency in developing secure software systems, resulting in faster time-to-market and lower development costs.

Wind River Linux Secure provides companies with government-mandated security certification requirements, such as Common Criteria EAL4+ and FIPS 140-2, with a secure, commercial, general-purpose embedded Linux operating system.

Wind River Linux Secure also provides an additional layer of security through mandatory access controls, or MAC, along with enabling NSA-developed Security Enhanced Linux, or SELinux. With Wind River Linux Secure, companies can expect to meet their security needs as well as choose the best software for the job from a surplus of mature and widely used Linux-based open source solutions on a wide range of hardware platforms.

To reduce the risks typically associated with open source software, the tested and validated product is also backed by Wind River's global support and services organizations. Companies requiring an EAL4+-certified Linux distribution can simply use Wind River Linux Secure instead of undertaking Common Criteria and FIPS security certification directly and avoid the high-risk, formal certification process.

The Wind River Linux Secure product is rich with security features, including identification and authentication, audit, discretionary access control, cryptographic services, security management as well as security function protection. Also, for additional security needs, customers will also be able to take advantage of multilevel security through SELinux, run-time memory protection through grsecurity and several system recovery tools.

Wind River Linux Secure will initially be available on selected platforms of Intel architecture, Power Architecture and ARM. The introduction of Wind River Linux Secure is expected in the first half of 2011.