ITSEF

Presentation

SERMA TECHNOLOGIES’ ITSEF (Information Technology Security Evaluation Facility) is a leading accredited security evaluation laboratory for Common Criteria security evaluations. It proposes its skills and services to industry leaders worldwide, for security assessment of an increasing range of products : smartcards in their various applications (such as banking, e-passport, pay-tv…) and other products providing security and cryptography services (hardware security modules, transactional boxes…).

The ITSEF accreditation covers the following domain : "Common Criteria evaluations up to the EAL5 level (attack potential capability up to “High”) on electronic components (hardware) and embedded software (and particularly Java Card)” and CSPN in the same fields.

In 2007, the ITSEF has also performed the first evaluation of a product with a formal design, and has applied all the evaluation tasks from the EAL7 design class involving formal methods. As any ITSEF in France, our laboratory is supervised by the French Certification Body (ANSSI).

The ITSEF has also been approved by MasterCard Worldwide, EMVCo and VISA for security expertises of smart cards (contact and contactless) within the CAST, EMVCo and VCSP security evaluation program.



History

With its well established skills in microelectronics, SERMA TECHNOLOGIES started its ITSEF activities on its Pessac site in 1998 on generic ICs (i.e. ICs without any embedded applicative software). The evaluation activities started directly with the then new Common Criteria standard. After a start period (to allow for the set-up of the initial technical group and for a practice of the Common Criteria), the first project ended in early 2000 with a Common Criteria certification (the first CC certificate worldwide on a smartcard IC). In addition to this initial success, 2000 was also the year of the official quality accreditation by COFRAC (ISO17025) and of the official licensing as an ITSEF by the French Certification Office (ANSSI). These official certificates have been renewed ever since.

Over the following years, the initial skills in microelectronics were quickly completed with skills on software (to deal with embedded software) and on cryptography (as most evaluated products included cryptographic services). Though still mainly focused on smartcards, the evaluation activities opened from generic ICs to products with banking applications and electronic signatures, including Java Card devices.

From 2003 Common Criteria activities on smartcards were completed with expertises (and occasionally evaluations) on other products (always hardware with embedded software) such as cryptographic cards or transactional boxes.



Tomorrow

Tomorrow our activities will be extended to other domains:

• • the ITSEF of SERMA TECHNOLOGIES actively participates in application of "security" into the world of "safety". Together with EADS we are a leader of SEISES (Aerospace Valley's project concerning security and safety of aerial transport and spatial),
• • we also play a main role in a TES (Secured Electronic Transactions) project, that assures security of services (such as payment or pay-TV) embedded in the world of mobile phones and smartphones,
• • besides the embedded devices and systems, we also extend our offer to the activities of software evaluation and expertise : operating systems, mobile devices, networks, firewalls, ...