BEA Systems has announced that WebLogic Server 8.1 SP5 has been granted Evaluation Assurance Level 2 (EAL2) Common Criteria Certification. Achieving this certification is a key milestone in that it enables BEA to sell into government agencies worldwide where customers are mandated to purchase products that are Common Criteria-certified.

“Achieving Common Criteria certification demonstrates BEA’s commitment to supporting essential government standards that are mandated by our customers,” said Kelly Collins, vice president and general manager of Federal Sales at BEA Systems. “As such, WebLogic is extremely well positioned to help government agencies help meet their security needs in the mission-critical application infrastructure area. BEA is committed to working closely with NIST as we progress through the certification process for all of our core products, including our AquaLogic product line enabling Service Oriented Architectures.”

The Common Criteria certification program was founded under the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), which is a joint venture between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Security Agency (NSA). The Program was established to evaluate information technology (IT) product conformance to international standards, help consumers select commercial off-the-shelf IT products that meet their security requirements and to help manufacturers of those products gain acceptance in the global marketplace.

The primary objectives of the Common Criteria certification program are to meet the needs of government and industry for cost-effective evaluation of IT products, encourage the formation of commercial security testing laboratories (and the development of a private sector security testing industry), ensure that security evaluations of IT products are performed to consistent standards and improve the availability of evaluated IT products.

BEA WebLogic is designed to provide a seamless production environment for integration specialists and application developers alike. The software responds to today's business challenges by providing an application infrastructure solution that can help to increase operational efficiency, enhance responsiveness to stakeholders and improve enterprise adaptability to change. The easy-to-use development, management and administration tools were created to reduce technical complexity and can enable enterprises to strategically align business and technical objectives and achieve a rapid time-to-value for business integration projects.