Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V has passed Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL 4+)

I’m going to interrupt our flow of Windows Server “8” blog posts to share this hot off the press news regarding Windows Server 2008/R2 and Common Criteria.

I am happy to announce that Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V has passed the Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL 4+). Over the past 10 years, Microsoft has continued to demonstrate leadership in certifying our operating systems and applications, in order to provide customers with the additional confidence of independent validation of our design and security engineering.

Similar to our previous operating system evaluations and the independent Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V evaluation, we used the Windows Server 2008 R2 evaluation to demonstrate how Hyper-V is methodically designed, tested, and reviewed from a security perspective. The Hyper-V evaluation focused on isolation between the host partition and guest partitions, isolation between guest partitions and the Live Migration capability, which was added in Windows Server 2008 R2.

The Hyper-V evaluation was performed by atsec Information Security GmbH and certified by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the body of the German government which certifies products according to the ITSEC criteria for evaluating computer security and the Common Criteria (CC).

Windows Server “8” will continue to build on this capability and security in Hyper-V and the Windows Server platform to provide consistent, reliable and secure platform solutions for private clouds and datacenters. We encourage customers to explore and build on the evaluated Hyper-V platform to meet your needs for the next generation applications and services!