Introduction

The SOG-IS agreement was produced in response to the EU Council Decision of March 31st 1992 (92/242/EEC) in the field of security of information systems, and the subsequent Council recommendation of April 7th (1995/144/EC) on common information technology security evaluation criteria.

The agreement was updated in January 2010 and the full text can be downloaded in the section "Agreement" of the Web site. Participants in this Agreement are government organisations or government agencies from countries of the European Union or EFTA (European Free Trade Association), representing their country or countries. As of June 2017, the national bodies participating in the agreement are:

	Austria, Bundeskanzleramt
	Belgium, Centre for Cyber Security Belgium
	Croatia, Information Systems Security Bureau
	Denmark, CFCS - Center for Cyber Security
	Estonia, RIA - Riigi Infosüsteemi Amet
	Finland, FICORA - Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority
	France, ANSSI - Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d'Information
	Germany, BSI - Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik
	Italy, OCSI - Organismo di Certificazione della Sicurezza Informatica
	Luxembourg, ANSSI.lu - Agence Nationale de la Sécurite des Systèmes d'Information Luxembourg
	The Netherlands , NLNCSA - Netherlands National Communications Security Agency, Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations
	Norway, SERTIT - Norwegian National Security Authority operates the Norwegian Certification Authority for IT Security
	Poland, NASK - Naukowa i Akademicka Siec Komputerowa
	Slovakia, NBÚ - Národný bezpečnostný úrad
	Spain, CCN - Centro Criptológico Nacional, Organismo de Certificación de la Seguridad de las Tecnologías de la Información
	Sweden, FMV - Försvarets Materielverk
	United Kingdom, NCSC - National Cyber Security Centre

The participants work together to:

Coordinate the standardisation of Common Criteria protection profiles and certification policies between European Certification Bodies in order to have a common position in the fast growing international CCRA group
Coordinate the development of protection profiles whenever the European commission launches a directive that should be implemented in national laws as far as IT-security is involved

The agreement provides for member nations to participate in two fundamental ways:

As certificate consuming participants and
As certificate producers

For certificate producing nations there are also two levels of recognition within the agreement:

Certificate recognition up to EAL4 (as in CCRA)
Certificate recognition at higher levels for defined technical areas when schemes have been approved by the management committee for this level.

Rationale for the updated SOG-IS Agreement

The original agreement signed in 1997 (updated to incorporate the use of Common Criteria in 1999) was updated in 2010 for two reasons; firstly to provide a robust mechanism allowing new schemes to take part as certificate producers and, secondly, to limit the higher levels of recognition to agreed technical domains where adequate agreement around evaluation methodology, laboratory requirements, attack methods etc. are in place.

Further Information

The following pages provide more detail. Contact with the group can also be made through any of the participating schemes.

Announcements

February 2018:

Statement of the SOG-IS Management Committee on the relation between the SOG-IS Agreement and the European Certification Framework that is under negotiation at the EU Commission.

June 2023:

The SOG-IS MRA Management Committee has decided to accept the usage of the CC:2022 version of Common Criteria and CEM:2022 for issuing CC certificates by SOG-IS Schemes according to their authorizing status. Both, the CCRA version as well as the ISO version (ISO/IEC 15408:2022 and ISO/IEC 18045:2022) are accepted to be used.

Further, the transition policy and rules to migrate from CC V3.1 / CEM V3.1 to CC:2022 / CEM:2022 as defined by the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement (CCRA) are fully accepted by SOG-IS MRA.

CCRA CC:2022 and CEM:2022 as well as the transition policy document are available at: https://www.commoncriteriaportal.org/cc/

Contact

If you have questions regarding the SOG-IS MRA or its website, please contact one of the participants (see participants point of contact list).