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.

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.

For example, the Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria was referred to as "The Orange Book.

"[1] 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."