Values of formal Evaluation

Question 1

• What are the values of doing formal evaluation?
• What do you see as the drawbacks of evaluation?

If possible and applicable frame your answer around a situation relevant to your current work. If not frame your answer around a hypothetical situation or a situation which you have previously experienced in a past work environment. 

Question 2

The Common Criteria, CC, Web site is located at: http://www.commoncriteriaportal.org/index.html

• Go to the above web site and explore for yourself its contents. 
• Go to the certified products area and find hardware (or software or a bundled hardware and software product) which you are interested in or have firsthand knowledge about. For example, you might try to find the product Citrix Systems Inc. You may instead decide to lookup a Microsoft or Apple product, for example an operating system such as Windows 10 or IBM’s AIX operating system. 
• In the Session 3 Conference state what you found regarding your chosen product. What is the level at which it passed? Who was the evaluator? List three security requirements of your products. List three assurance requirements for the product.

Feel free to assume your role is to evaluate responses to your firms hypothetical Request For Proposals (RFP), for the acquisition or purchase of hardware and/or software or that your role is that of a member of a site Audit Team which is charged with determining compliance with the Common Criteria for your firms existing Information Communication Technology, ICT, hardware and software resources. Your role can even be that of a private individual who is interested in purchasing a hardware and software configuration and desires to evaluate it prior to buying.