India obtains the Authorizing Nation status for IT product testing

NEW DELHI, INDIA: India has been recognized as authorizing nation under the "Common Criteria - Recognition Arrangement" (CC-RA) scheme for IT products Testing. India now becomes the 17th Country to get the authorization among the 26 nations which agree to this participation. The announcement was made during the International Common Criteria Conference 2013 in Orlando, Florida.

The move from a participating nation to an authorizing nation will strengthen the position of India in the global assurance regime. This will help in two ways: Firstly, the labs in India will get the global recognition and the products tested in the labs will be accepted by the countries that are part of CCRA arrangement. Secondly, the investment and efforts for product testing certification by global product companies who would like to avail benefit of the arrangement in India will automatically be recognized by the other countries. Authorizing nation status will remove the bottleneck which, as of now, prevents submitting of products for testing in India.

Further, the recognition of India as an authorizing nation will allow India to create a national certification scheme as recommended under the Joint Working Group (JWG) of NSA. The JWG report on ‘Engagement with Private Sector on Cyber Security' recommends establishment of private owned testing labs, and also highlights the need for providing incentives to the private sector for opening test labs. Important step in this direction is to have a certification body, which can accredit the testing labs.

STQC (Standardization Testing and Quality Certification), with experience in spearheading standardization, testing and certification initiatives in the country, is better placed to assume the role of certification body. STQC not only possess desired infrastructure, recognized and accredited by reputed accreditation bodies, it also has deployed skills for evaluating the product and gained critical experience in testing and certification of products. Leveraging the infrastructure, skills and experience of STQC will help India achieve the goals of the National Testing and Certification in a short span of the time.