Rainbow Series

The Rainbow Series (sometimes known as the Rainbow Books) is a series of computer security standards and guidelines published by the United States government in the 1980s and 1990s. They were originally published by the U.S. Department of Defense Computer Security Center, and then by the National Computer Security Center.

These standards describe a process of evaluation for trusted systems. In some cases, U.S. government entities (as well as private firms) would require formal validation of computer technology using this process as part of their procurement criteria. Many of these standards have influenced, and have been superseded by, the Common Criteria.

The books have nicknames based on the color of its cover. For example, the Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria was referred to as "The Orange Book." In the book entitled Applied Cryptography, security expert Bruce Schneier states of NCSC-TG-021 that he "can't even begin to describe the color of [the] cover" and that some of the books in this series have "hideously colored covers." He then goes on to describe how to receive a copy of them, saying "Don't tell them I sent you."

The 1995 cult classic movie Hackers contained a reference to the Rainbow Books that showed Dade naming off a series of six books, the second of them being the Orange Book ("Computer security criteria, DoD standards") and the sixth being the Red Book ("NSA Trusted Networks. Otherwise known as the Ugly Red Book that won’t fit on a shelf") from this series. Phreak called them "those Crayola books" and Cereal replied, "Oh yeah, Technicolor rainbow." However the other books, such as the Peter Norton "pink shirt book" (The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC), are not part of the Rainbow Series.

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