The Common Criteria project harmonises ITSEC, CTCPEC (Canadian Criteria) and US Federal Criteria (FC) into the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (CC) for use in evaluating products and systems and for stating security requirements in a standardised way. Increasingly it is replacing national and regional criteria with a worldwide set accepted by the International Standards Organisation (ISO15408).

The international community has embraced the CC through the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement (CCRA) whereby the signers have agreed to accept the results of CC evaluations performed by other CCRA members.

Thales' Datacryptor is the first network security product to be awarded EAL Level 5 in the UK.

This independent evaluation by Common Criteria means that Datacryptor 2000 is now approved for use across 16 nations including the UK , the USA , France , Germany and Canada.