Technical Summary
The demand for hosted (or cloud-based) security services is growing.
To meet the demand, more and more service providers are providing
hosted security solutions to deliver cost-effective managed security
services to enterprise customers. The Network Security Functions
(NSFs) are provided and consumed in a large variety of environments.
Users of NSFs may consume network security services hosted by one or
more providers, which may be their own enterprise, service providers,
or a combination of both. This indicates a potential benefit in a
common interface and architecture to access NSFs.
This document describes the problem statement for Interface to
Network Security Functions (I2NSF) as well as some companion use
cases.
Working Group Summary
This is the first document coming from the I2NSF WG. It is
the result of combining 4 separate documents. It had more
review in earlier stages, but I agree with the shepherd that
there is WG consensus on this draft.
Document Quality
This problem statement is not, of itself, implementable. The WG has
participation from a number of implementers/vendors of NSFs who say
they want to work on solutions with a view to providing standardized
interfaces. The operators who are participating have not committed
to deploy such an interface, but are watching to see how it ends up
because they recognize the potential benefit.
Personnel
Adrian Farrel (adrian@olddog.co.uk) is the Document Shepherd.
Kathleen Moriarty (kathleen.moriarty.ietf@gmail.com) is the Responsible
Area Director.