Pi – Protection Profile Process Improvement

Development of a protection profile under the Common Criteria is a demanding task, requiring difficult engineering decisions, complex analyses, and detailed knowledge about the intended environment and use for a product or system. We believe that building a protection profile is essentially a security engineering problem and is best approached by applying the Systems Security Engineering Capability Maturity Model (SSE-CMM). This paper describes how the process areas of the SSE-CMM match the activities needed to create an effective protection profile. Further, the paper shows how protection profile developers can use the assurance argument process to structure and manage the rationale for each requirement. The paper concludes that the use of the SSE-CMM will greatly enhance the likelihood of producing a high quality protection profile on schedule and within budget.