Red Hat’s Operating System Gets NIST Data Security Recertification; Paul Smith Quoted

Red Hat has received Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 recertification from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for its Enterprise Linux 7.5 operating system.

Paul Smith, senior vice president and general manager of Red Hat’s public sector in North America, said in a statement published Thursday the FIPS 140-2 recertification seeks to show the capability of the company’s software to deliver “secure computing at both the operating system and layered infrastructure levels.”

NIST’s FIPS 140-2 is a security standard that sets the requirements for cryptographic modules to safeguard unclassified, sensitive information within a security platform.

The renewed certification covers several portfolio tech platforms that integrate Enterprise Linux 7.5 including Red Hat Ceph Storage, Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host, Red Hat Gluster Storage, Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Virtualization.

Cryptographic modules included in the certification include OpenSSL, OpenSSH Server, OpenSSH Client, NSS, Kernel Crypto API and Libreswan.

The accreditation also covers the use of the modules in hardware configurations such as Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 with Processor Algorithm Accelerators and Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 without PAA.

Atsec information security performed validation tests on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 through its Austin, Texas-based testing laboratory.