Sensitive electronic systems and circuits—think passports and banking applications—must be certified for resistance to security attacks to ensure that they sufficiently protect the data they contain. Without certification, these products cannot be sold. In France, evaluations are conducted by IT security evaluation centers (CESTI) that use the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation. Leti, a CEA Tech institute, is home to one of these evaluation centers (CESTI Leti).

For the first time ever, CESTI Leti recently granted EAL6+ certification (the second-highest security level) to a complete product, a Samsung secure microcontroller. The certification was validated by France’s national IT security agency, ANSSI, officially positioning CESTI Leti to perform security evaluations for the most demanding applications.

CESTI Leti also operates outside of the scope of France’s certification scheme. The center recently earned recognition as an official evaluation laboratory for the new NXP-MIFARE certification system. MIFARE is one of the most commonly-used contactless IC technologies. And CESTI Leti is also applying to become a GlobalPlatform® accredited laboratory.

These certifications and accreditations give CESTI Leti the capacity to respond to a very wide range of IT and systems security requests.