Using Security Posture Assessment to Grant Access to Enterprise Network Resources
draft-ietf-sacm-use-cases-01
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (sacm WG) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | David Waltermire , David Harrington | ||
| Last updated | 2013-09-11 | ||
| Stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
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draft-ietf-sacm-use-cases-01
Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring WG D. Waltermire
Internet-Draft NIST
Intended status: Informational D. Harrington
Expires: March 16, 2014 Effective Software
September 12, 2013
Using Security Posture Assessment to Grant Access to Enterprise Network
Resources
draft-ietf-sacm-use-cases-01
Abstract
This memo documents a sampling of use cases for securely aggregating
configuration and operational data and assessing that data to
determine an organization's security posture. From these operational
use cases, we can derive common functional capabilities and
requirements to guide development of vendor-neutral, interoperable
standards for aggregating and assessing data relevant to security
posture.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on March 16, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
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to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Endpoint Posture Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Definition and Publication of Automatable Configuration
Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Automated Checklist Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3. Organizational Software Policy Compliance . . . . . . . . 7
3.4. Detection of Posture Deviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.5. Others... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Functional Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Asset Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1.1. Asset Class Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1.2. Asset Instance Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2. Asset Characterization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.3. Deconfliction of Asset Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.4. Asset Targeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.5. Other Unedited Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.5.1. Endpoint Configuration Management . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.5.1.1. Organizing Configuration Metadata . . . . . . . . 15
4.5.1.2. Publishing Recommended Configuration Posture . . 16
4.5.1.3. Defining Organizationally Expected Configuration
Posture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.5.1.4. Collecting Endpoint Configuration Posture . . . . 16
4.5.1.5. Comparing Expected and Actual Configuration
Posture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.5.1.6. Examining configuration of logical to physical
mappings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.5.1.7. Configuring Endpoint Interfaces . . . . . . . . . 17
4.5.2. Endpoint Posture Change Management . . . . . . . . . 17
4.5.2.1. Defining and Exchanging Baselines . . . . . . . . 17
4.5.2.2. Detecting Unauthorized Changes . . . . . . . . . 17
4.5.3. Security Vulnerability Management . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.5.3.1. Example - NIDS response . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.5.3.2. Example - Historical vulnerability analysis . . . 19
4.5.3.3. Source Address Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.5.4. Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.5.5. Assessment Result Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.5.6. Content Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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8. Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8.1. -00- to -01- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8.2. draft-waltermire-sacm-use-cases-05 to draft-ietf-sacm-
use-cases-00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
8.3. -04- to -05- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1. Introduction
Our goal with this document is to improve our agreement on which
problems we're trying to solve. We need to start with short, simple
problem statements and discuss those by email and in person. Once we
agree on which problems we're trying to solve, we can move on to
propose various solutions and decide which ones to use.
This document describes example use cases for endpoint posture
assessment for enterprises. It provides a sampling of use cases for
securely aggregating configuration and operational data and assessing
that data to determine the security posture of individual endpoints,
and, in the aggregate, the security posture of an enterprise.
These use cases cross many IT security information domains. From
these operational use cases, we can derive common concepts, common
information expressions, functional capabilities and requirements to
guide development of vendor-neutral, interoperable standards for
aggregating and assessing data relevant to security posture.
Using this standard data, tools can analyze the state of endpoints,
user activities and behaviour, and assess the security posture of an
organization. Common expression of information should enable
interoperability between tools (whether customized, commercial, or
freely available), and the ability to automate portions of security
processes to gain efficiency, react to new threats in a timely
manner, and free up security personnel to work on more advanced
problems.
The goal is to enable organizations to make informed decisions that
support organizational objectives, to enforce policies for hardening
systems, to prevent network misuse, to quantify business risk, and to
collaborate with partners to identify and mitigate threats.
It is expected that use cases for enterprises and for service
providers will largely overlap, but there are additional
complications for service providers, especially in handling
information that crosses administrative domains.
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The output of endpoint posture assessment is expected to feed into
additional processes, such as policy-based enforcement of acceptable
state, verification and monitoring of security controls, and
compliance to regulatory requirements.
2. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
3. Endpoint Posture Assessment
Endpoint posture assessment involves orchestrating and performing
data collection and analysis pertaining to the posture of a given
endpoint. Typically, endpoint posture information is gathered and
then published to appropriate data repositories to make collected
information available for further analysis supporting organizational
security processes.
Endpoint posture assessment typically includes:
o Collecting the posture of a given endpoint;
o Making that posture available to the enterprise for further
analysis and action; and
o Performing analysis to assess that the endpoint's posture is in
compliance with enterprise standards and policy.
As part of these activities it is often necessary to identify and
acquire any supporting content that is needed to drive data
collection and analysis.
The following is a typical success scenario for endpoint posture
assessment:
1. Define a target endpoint to be assessed
2. Select acceptable state policies to apply to the defined target
3. Identify the endpoint being assessed
4. Collect posture attributes from the target
5. Communicate target identity and collected posture to external
system for evaluation
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6. Compare collected posture attributes from the target endpoint
with expected state values as expressed in acceptable state
policies
The following subsections detail specific use cases for data
collection, analysis, and related operations pertaining to the
publication and use of supporting content.
3.1. Definition and Publication of Automatable Configuration Guides
QUESTION: This use case applies equally to vendors representing other
endpoint types. Should this be generalized to capture this notion?
A network device vendor manufactures a number of enterprise grade
routers and other network devices. The also develop and maintain an
operating system for these devices that enables end-user
organizations to configure a number of security and operational
settings for these devices. As part of their customer support
activities, they publish a number of secure configuration guides that
provide minimum security guidelines for configuring their devices.
Each guide they produce applies to a specific model of device and
version of the operating system and provides a number of specialized
configurations depending on the devices intended function and what
add-on hardware modules and software licenses are installed on the
device. To enable their customers to assess the security posture of
their devices to ensure that all appropriate minimal security
settings are enabled, they publish an automatable configuration
checklist using a popular data format that defines what settings to
check using a network management protocol and appropriate values for
each setting. They publish these guides to a public content
repository that customers can query to retrieve applicable guides for
their deployed enterprise network infrastructure endpoints.
To support this use case, the following capabilities will be
utilized:
o Asset Identification (see section 4.1) - Hardware and software
class-level asset identities will be used to identify the
applicable targets for each configuration guide and within the
guide specialized targets for licensed features and hardware
modules.
o Asset Characterization - Asset characteristics will be used to
identify the target endpoint functions addressed by each
configuration guide.
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o Asset Targeting - Applicability expressions will be described
using asset identification and characterization attributes to
scope the checklist and specific groupings of configurations to
associated hardware and software products, features, and asset
functions.
o [TODO: Need to list other functions here as the sections
stabilize.]
QUESTION: Is providing traceability to functional capabilities
useful? If so, we need to replicate this for the other use cases.
3.2. Automated Checklist Verification
A financial services company operates a heterogeneous IT environment.
In support of their risk management program, they utilize vendor
provided automatable security configuration checklists for each
operating system and application used within their IT environment.
Multiple checklists are used from different vendors to insure
adequate coverage of all IT assets.
To identify what checklists are needed, they use automation to gather
an inventory of the software versions utilized by all IT assets in
the enterprise. This data gathering will involve querying existing
data stores of previously collected endpoint software inventory
posture data and actively collecting data from reachable endpoints as
needed utilizing network and systems management protocols.
Previously collected data may be provided by periodic data
collection, network connection-driven data collection, or ongoing
event-driven monitoring of endpoint posture changes.
Using the gathered software inventory data and associated asset
management data indicating the organizational defined functions of
each endpoint, they locate and query each vendors content repository
for the appropriate checklists. These checklists are cached locally
to reduce the need to download the checklist multiple times.
Driven by the setting data provided in the checklist, a combination
of existing configuration data stores and data collection methods are
used to gather the appropriate posture information from each
endpoint. Specific data is gathered based on the defined enterprise
function and software inventory of each endpoint. The data
collection paths used to collect software inventory posture will be
used again for this purpose. Once the data is gathered, the actual
state is evaluated against the expected state criteria in each
applicable checklist. Deficiencies are identified and reported to
the appropriate endpoint operators for remedy.
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3.3. Organizational Software Policy Compliance
Example Corporation, in support of compliance requirements, has
identified a number of secure baselines for different endpoint types
that exist across their enterprise IT environment. Determining which
baseline applies to a given endpoint is based on the organizationally
defined function of the device.
Each baseline, defined using an automatable standardized data format,
identifies the expected hardware, software and patch inventory, and
software configuration item values for each endpoint type. As part
of their compliance activities, they require that all endpoints
connecting to their network meet the appropriate baselines. Each
endpoint is checked to make sure it complies with the appropriate
baseline whenever it connects to the network and at least once a day
thereafter. These daily compliance checks assess the posture of each
endpoint and report on its compliance with the appropriate baseline.
[TODO: Need to speak to how the baselines are identified for a given
endpoint connecting to the network.]
3.4. Detection of Posture Deviations
Example corporation has established secure configuration baselines
for each different type of endpoint within their enterprise
including: network infrastructure, mobile, client, and server
computing platforms. These baselines define an approved list of
hardware, software (i.e., operating system, applications, and
patches), and associated required configurations. When an endpoint
connects to the network, the appropriate baseline configuration is
communicated to the endpoint based on its location in the network,
the expected function of the device, and other asset management data.
It is checked for compliance with the baseline indicating any
deviations to the device's operators. Once the baseline has been
established, the endpoint is monitored for any change events
pertaining to the baseline on an ongoing basis. When a change occurs
to posture defined in the baseline, updated posture information is
exchanged allowing operators to be notified and/or automated action
to be taken.
3.5. Others...
Additional use cases will be identified as we work through other
domains.
4. Functional Capabilities
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The use cases defined in the previous section highlight various uses
of endpoint posture assessment to support a variety of IT security
business processes. The following subsections address derived
functional capabilities that are needed to support these use cases.
4.1. Asset Identification
Organizations manage a variety of assets within their enterprise
including: endpoints, the hardware they are composed of, installed
software, hardware/software licenses used, and configurations.
Identifying assets is critical for managing information provided
about and collected from endpoints. In order to manage these assets
over time it is necessary to uniquely identify them and to use this
identification to express asset properties and to establish
relationships between different assets.
When possible, stable identification mechanisms should be used that
will allow the asset to be identified over time enabling information
pertaining to the asset to be correlated. In some cases stable asset
identifiers may not be available or they may change over time due to
operational conditions. For example, identifiers may be stable for
the life of a hardware component. In other cases (e.g., MAC
addresses), the identifier may be mutable within software. In an
enterprise context it is often necessary to use multiple
identification viewpoints for an asset to correlate data generated
from endpoint, network, and human sources. To deal with these
scenarios, it is important to use multiple forms of asset
identification concurrently to allow asset data to be deconflicted
(see section Section 4.3.
REQUIREMENT: Many standard and proprietary forms of asset
identification exist today. To provide adequate coverage, use of any
identification mechanism, both standardized and proprietary, SHOULD
be allowed.
Object-oriented programming introduces two different concepts when
dealing with data: classes and instances. A class represents a data
type which can be varied in a number of ways, while an instance
represents a realized variation of a class. This distinction can be
applied to identifying assets as described in the following
subsections.
4.1.1. Asset Class Identification
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An asset class identifies a distinct type of asset. Assets
identified at the class level are useful for describing things that
can be instantiated or duplicated. Having the ability to associate
data with asset classes enable common properties and relationships to
be expressed that apply to all copies.
Examples of class-level asset identities include:
o Software releases and patches - Identifiers that represent
distinct software revision releases for firmware, operating
systems, applications, software suites, and patches and other
forms of software updates.
o Hardware components - Identifiers that distinguish specific parts
and production runs for hardware devices and components.
o Organizational endpoint types - Identifiers that represent
distinct endpoint configurations associated with a specific
organizational IT function.
o Others? - Please suggest any additional examples on the list
By identifying different types of assets at the class-level, common
characteristics (see section 4.2) and content (see section 4.4) can
be associated. Using class identification it is possible to define
relationships between assets and other data including: software
dependencies, associated patches, supported hardware architectures,
associated vulnerabilities, and related configuration items.
In many object-oriented languages classes can exist in hierarchies.
This enables association of data at different levels of abstraction.
This is also a useful concept for asset identification. For example,
a class may exist for router endpoint types, with subclasses
representing different vendor product releases. This enables
characteristics and content to be associated at various levels of
abstraction reducing data management challenges.
A variety of asset identification schemes exist for asset classes,
including some that can be exposed within an operating environment
for data collection. These may include: part numbers and revisions
for hardware and software product identifiers. [TODO: We need
examples of existing standardized asset class identification schemes?
REQUIREMENT: When available these asset identifiers SHOULD be used to
identify asset classes in collected and analyzed data.
4.1.2. Asset Instance Identification
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An asset instance identifies a specific copy or variation of an asset
identification class. Identification of asset instances is necessary
for expressing specific properties and relationships within an
installed context. For example a network interface card installed in
a specific router in branch office's network closet, or a word
processing application release installed on Bob's desktop.
Identification of asset instances can be supported using a variety of
identification schemes. Hardware vendors often expose asset instance
identification data to the operating system including: product tags,
CPU identifiers, etc. In some cases, such as for software, it may be
necessary to express instance information as a relation to the
installed device. For example, using a software class identifier
with a hardware identifier to establish the software instance on a
specific endpoint. Organizationally provided identifiers can also be
used to identify assets such as those provided by hardware and
software certificates, and other configurable identification sources.
Accessing specific identifiers on an endpoint may require privileges
on the device. When identifying an endpoint from a network context,
or if other forms of device identification are not available or
access is not authorized, it may be necessary to identify an endpoint
using network addressing information (e.g., MAC addresses, IP
addresses). If only network data is used, additional analysis will
be needed to correlate an endpoint's identity across multiple
connection sessions often resulting in partial confidence of the
assets identity over time.
Some existing standards support the identification of the hardware
and the system software on a given endpoint. For example, the
SYSTEM-MIB [RFC1213] contains a description of the endpoint, an
authoritative identifier of the type of endpoint assigned by the
vendor of the endpoint, an administrative name for the endpoint, plus
the endpoint's contact person, the location of the endpoint, system
time, and an enumerator that identifies the layer of services
provided by the endpoint. The system description includes the
vendor, product type, model number, OS version, and networking
software version.
Similar information is available via the YANG module ietf-system .
This module includes data node definitions for system identification,
time-of-day management, user management, DNS resolver configuration,
and some protocol operations for system management.
4.2. Asset Characterization
TERM: Asset characterization is the process of defining attributes
that describe properties of an identified asset.
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Asset characterization provides additional context that is useful to
support automated and human decision making as part of operational
and security processes. It is necessary to gather, organize, store,
manage, and exchange a variety of different asset characteristics.
Often this information helps to bridge automated and human-oriented
processes. To assess assets (managed and unmanaged), we need to
understand the composition and relationships between different assets
types. We need the ability to properly characterize assets at the
outset and over time.
Managing endpoints, and the different types of assets that compose
them, involves initially identifying and characterizing each asset.
This information is important to provide additional context for
supporting management of assets using human and automated processes.
Characterization may include business context not otherwise related
to security, but which may be used as information in support of
security decision making. For example, it may be possible to
automate assessing that an endpoint is out of compliance with
organizational configuration guidelines, but additional information
is needed to determine who to notify to correct the configuration.
Information provided by asset characterization will enable
notifications to be sent, trouble tickets to be generated, or
specific reports to be generated at a dashboard for a systems
administrator.
The following are examples of useful asset characteristics that may
be provided:
For asset classes:
o Information pertaining to the developer, manufacturer, and/or
publisher of hardware and software
o The composition, dependencies, and function of hardware and
software
o Production version
o Hardware characteristics and software operational requirements
(e.g., processor architecture, memory, storage, network
interfaces)
o Metadata identifying: product family, edition, licensing
o End-of-support dates
For asset instances:
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o The business and operational context (e.g., required function/
role, owning organization, responsible parties)
o The composition and relationship of its constituent and containing
assets (e.g., installed hardware and software versions
o Assigned location for physical devices
o The current location within network(s)
o Current/historic operational state (e.g., running software,
processes, user sessions)
It can be important to characterize the components of an endpoint,
including physical and logical components, and the relationships
between the components, such as containment of components within
other components, or mappings between logical entities and the
physical entities used to instantiate them. The information about
the physical entities might include manufacturer-assigned serial
number, manufacture date, an asset identifier for the component, and
so. Logical entities may be defined, and associated with the
physical entities using a mapping table.
Assets may be characterized based on data collected directly from
endpoints (see section 4.5.4) or by data provided by humans. While
machnine-oriented sources of asset characterization data may be
preferred, in many cases it is impractical or infeasible to collect
specific asset details using technical data collection mechanisms.
This is often true for asset characterization details that relate to
the business, operational, or security context of the asset. In
these cases human data entry is required to provide the necessary
data.
Asset characterization data may be made available to tools from a
variety of sources. Asset data that is human-oriented and that
infrequently changes may be provided as records in a content
repository. Other sources of asset characterization data may
include: asset management, configuration management, and other
enterprise data stores.
Example standardized data models include the ENTITY-MIB [RFC6933] the
Q-BRIDGE-MIB MIB [RFC4363] and the MIB for Virtual Machines
Controlled by a Hypervisor .
Another example is the HOST-RESOURCES-MIB [RFC2790].
[QUESTION: Do we need to document more examples?.]
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[QUESTION: Are these examples appropriate for this section? They
seem to be more about data collection.]
[QUESTION: It's not clear if aspects of endpoint posture should be
included in this category. One way to look at asset characterization
is that it is metadata that is provided by humans only. Do we want
to move concepts that pertain to posture collected from endpoints to
a different sub-section?]
4.3. Deconfliction of Asset Identities
Different tools and data sources will use varying methods for asset
identification. These methods should be standardized as much as
possible to reduce the need for deconfliction. In reality, it will
not be possible to standardize all forms of asset identification due
to legacy, authorization, or network visibility concerns. In these
cases, multiple forms of asset identity will need to be collected to
enable tools to perform correlation of provided asset identification
data.
For class-level asset identities, it may be necessary for vendors and
end-user organizations to provide mapping data enabling translations
between different representations. Maintaining mappings between
asset identification representations is often a labor-intensive,
manual process that should be avoided by encouraging use of
standardized asset identifiers.
For instance-level asset identities, multiple forms of asset
identification should be provided when collecting data from
endpoints. Algorithms can then be used to weight and reconcile
different types asset identities, and collected characteristics to
correlate new data collected with historic information pertaining to
an asset and/or endpoint. In many cases where insufficient
identification information is available, it may only be possible to
associate data collected from different points of view at a minimum
level of confidence.
4.4. Asset Targeting
TERM: Asset targeting is the use of asset identification and
categorization information to drive human-directed, automated
decision making for data collection and analysis in support of
endpoint posture assessment.
Endpoints, and the assets that compose them, contain a wealth of
posture information. It is impractical to collect the full posture
of all endpoints managed by and accessing resources within an
organization. To support practical assessment of endpoint posture,
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it is necessary to collect specific posture information from
endpoints based on an anticipated or actual need for the data. This
collection may be performed by polling the endpoint for specific
posture information on an ad-hoc basis or at regular intervals, or by
communicating to the endpoint what posture information it should
monitor and provide when changes occur. To support both methods, it
will be necessary to associate what posture details need to be
collected with asset identification and categorization information
that describe what types of endpoints and assets that may provide
these details. Furthermore, it will be necessary to use asset
identification and categorization information to identify what assets
should be evaluated for specific assessments.
When defining content that drives data collection and analysis
activities, or that provides information that enriches analysis of
collected data, the need exists to relate this data to identified
assets or to categories of assets described by asset characteristics.
These associations, often called "statements of applicability" are
critical to exposing information for machine processing.
Statements of applicability enable digital policies (e.g.,
checklists, baselines, access control rules), data records (e.g.,
vulnerability data, associations of patches to software) to be
associated with asset, security, operational, and business contexts.
Using these associations, applicable content can be queried in
content repositories and made available at the points where the data
needs to be used. They also enable humans to query and (re)use
content provided by other individuals in their organization, by
vendors, and 3rd parties in constructing policies and configuring
data collection and analysis tools.
For example, in order to establish an understanding of the security
state of endpoints managed by an organization, the security system
needs to be able to make use of various asset management data. It
needs to:
o Determine what is the expected state for those endpoints. To do
this it will need to identify what expected state criteria is
associated with the endpoint based on the identification and
characterization of the endpoint, and any assets that compose the
endpoint.
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o Once the criteria is identified, it will need to determine what
actual state data is needed to feed the analysis. This data will
need to be retrieved from existing data stores and from the
endpoints directly if necessary. Data collection rules may be
associated with specific asset identifiers or characteristics that
indicate what data sources or collectors to use to acquire the
data.
o Once the necessary actual state information is acquired, the
evaluator may need additional content to perform the analysis.
Based on the collected information, specific records will be
queried from a content repository based on asset identifiers and
characteristics.
o Finally, the appropriate assessment can be performed.
4.5. Other Unedited Content
The current editorial focus has been on the old asset management
subsection. The content in these subsections needs to be reworked
next.
4.5.1. Endpoint Configuration Management
Organizations manage a variety of configurations within their
enterprise including: endpoints, the hardware they are composed of,
installed software, hardware/software licenses used, and
configurations.
Security configuration management (SCM) deals with the configuration
of endpoints, including networking infrastructure devices and
computing hosts. Data will include installed hardware and software,
its configuration, and its use on the endpoint.
[TODO: While some configuration settings might not be considered
security relevant, it is not always possible to draw a clear
distinction between security and non-security settings (e.g., power
saving features). Do we want to make a distinction between security
and non-security configuration settings?]
The following list details some requisite Configuration Management
capabilities:
o [todo]
4.5.1.1. Organizing Configuration Metadata
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Configuration metadata supports tooling helping organizations
understand what configuration they should implement, using specific
configuration values.
Enable data repositories containing machine-readable representations
of:
Configuration scoring: Characterizations of the relative security
value of discrete configuration settings and specific values
Configuration dependencies (e.g., lists of settings, associated
software, pre-requisite configurations)
Control catalog mappings supporting compliance [todo: in scope?]
4.5.1.2. Publishing Recommended Configuration Posture
Provide a mechanism for vendors and organizations to exchange
machine-oriented descriptions of recommended configuration setting
for software products. Enable organizations to apply recommended
settings as expected configuration posture. Enable association of
data-driven collection instructions using appropriate formats.
4.5.1.3. Defining Organizationally Expected Configuration Posture
Provide a mechanism for organizations to define and exchange expected
configuration posture including: authorized software and associated
configuration settings.
[TODO: Should software installation posture be defined separately?]
4.5.1.4. Collecting Endpoint Configuration Posture
Enable collection and exchange of actual configuration posture
including: installed software and values for configured settings.
[TODO: Should collecting software installation posture be defined
separately?]
4.5.1.5. Comparing Expected and Actual Configuration Posture
Enable evaluation of actual configuration posture against expected
configuration posture. Generate a machine-oriented description of
conformant and non-conformant posture including software inventory
and configuration values.
[TODO: Should collecting software installation posture be defined
separately?]
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[TODO: Examining software version configuration - Example - HOST-
RESOURCES-MIB
4.5.1.6. Examining configuration of logical to physical mappings
[TODO: not sure what this is? Is it in scope?]
Example - ENTITY-MIB
4.5.1.7. Configuring Endpoint Interfaces
[TODO: not sure what this is? Is it in scope?]
Example - YANG module ietf-interfaces
4.5.2. Endpoint Posture Change Management
Organizations manage a variety of changes within their enterprise
including: [todo]
The following list details some requisite Change Management
capabilities:
o [todo]
4.5.2.1. Defining and Exchanging Baselines
[todo]
4.5.2.2. Detecting Unauthorized Changes
[todo]
[todo: figure out where these need to go]
4.5.2.2.1. Endpoint Addressing Changes
Example - DHCP addressing
4.5.2.2.2. Service Authorization Changes
Example - RADIUS network access
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4.5.2.2.3. Dynamic Resource Assignment Changes
Example - NAT logging
4.5.2.2.4. Security Authorization Status Changes
Example - SYSLOG Authorization messages. SYSLOG [RFC5424] includes
facilities for security authorization messages. These messages can
be used to alert an analysts that an authorization attempt failed,
and the analyst might choose to follow up and assess potential
attacks on the relevant endpoint.
4.5.3. Security Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability management involves identifying the patch level of
software installed on the device and the identification of insecure
custom code (e.g. web vulnerabilities). All vulnerabilities need to
be addressed as part of a comprehensive risk management program,
which is a superset of software vulnerabilities. Thus, the
capability of assessing non-software vulnerabilities applicable to
the system is required. Additionally, it may be necessary to support
non-technical assessment of data relating to assets such as aspects
related to operational and management controls.
policy attribute collection
The following list details some requisite Vulnerability Management
capabilities:
o Collect the state of non-technical controls commonly called
administrative controls (i.e. policy, process, procedure)
o Collect the state of technical controls including, but not
necessarily limited to:
* Software inventory (e.g. operating system, applications,
patches)
* Configuration settings
4.5.3.1. Example - NIDS response
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1. An organization's Network Intrusion Detection System detects a
suspect packet received by an endpoint and sends an alert to an
analyst. The analyst looks up the endpoint in the asset inventory
database, looks up the configuration policy associated with that
endpoint, and initiates an endpoint assessment of installed software
and patches on the endpoint to determine if the endpoint is compliant
with policy.
The analyst reviews the results of the assessment and takes action
according to organization policy and procedures.
4.5.3.2. Example - Historical vulnerability analysis
When a serious vulnerability or a zero-day attack is discovered, one
of the first priorities in any organization is to determine which
endpoints may have been affected and assess those endpoints to try to
determine whether they were compromised. Checking current endpoint
state is not sufficient because an endpoint may have been temporarily
compromised due to this vulnerability and then the infection may have
removed itself. In fact, the vulnerable software may have been
removed or upgraded since the compromise took place. And if the
endpoint is still compromised, the malware on the endpoint may cause
it to lie about its configuration. In this environment, maintaining
historical information about endpoint configuration is essential.
Such information can be used to find endpoints that had the
vulnerable software installed at some point in time. Those endpoints
can be checked for current or past indicators of compromise such as
files or behavior linked to a known exploit for this vulnerability.
Endpoints found to be vulnerable can be isolated to prevent infection
while remediation is done. Endpoints believed to be compromised can
be isolated for analysis and to limit the spread of infection.
4.5.3.3. Source Address Validation
Source Address Validation Improvement methods were developed to
prevent nodes attached to the same IP link from spoofing each other's
IP addresses, so as to complement ingress filtering with finer-
grained, standardized IP source address validation. The framework
document describes and motivates the design of the SAVI methods.
Particular SAVI methods are described in other documents.
4.5.4. Data Collection
Central to any automated assessment solution is the ability to
collect data from, or related to, an endpoint, such as the security
state of the endpoint and its constituent assets.
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So, is data collection a requirement or an architectural concept
rather than a use case?
QUESTION: Understand more about what is meant by non-software
vulnerabilities
4.5.5. Assessment Result Analysis
The data collected needs to be analyzed for compliance to a standard
stipulated by the enterprise. Analysis methods may vary between
enterprises, but commonly take a similar form.
The following capabilities support the analysis of assessment
results:
o Comparing actual state to expected state
o Scoring/weighting individual comparison results
o Relating specific comparisons to benchmark-level requirements
o Relating benchmark-level requirements to one or more control
frameworks
4.5.6. Content Management
The capabilities required to support risk management state
measurement will yield volumes of content. The efficacy of risk
management state measurement depends directly on the stability of the
driving content, and, subsequently, the ability to change content
according to enterprise needs.
Capabilities supporting Content Management should provide the ability
to create/define or modify content, as well as store and retrieve
said content of at least the following types:
o Configuration checklists
o Assessment rules
o Data collection rules and methods
o Scoring models
o Vulnerability information
o Patch information
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o Asset characterization data and rules
Note that the ability to modify content is in direct support of
tailoring content for enterprise-specific needs.
5. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
6. Security Considerations
This memo documents, for Informational purposes, use cases for
security automation. While it is about security, it does not affect
security.
7. Acknowledgements
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and/or the
MITRE Corporation have developed specifications under the general
term "Security Automation" including languages, protocols,
enumerations, and metrics.
The authors would like to recognize and thank Adam Montville for his
work on early edits of this draft. Additionally, the authors would
like to thank Kathleen Moriarty and Stephen Hanna for contributing
text to this document. The authors would also like to acknowledge
the members of the SACM mailing list for their keen and insightful
feedback on the concepts and text within this document.
8. Change Log
8.1. -00- to -01-
o Work on this revision has been focused on document content
relating primarily to use of asset management data and functions.
o Made significant updates to section 3 including:
* Reworked introductory text.
* Replaced the single example with multiple use cases that focus
on more discrete uses of asset management data to support
hardware and software inventory, and configuration management
use cases.
* For one of the use cases, added mapping to functional
capabilities used. If popular, this will be added to the other
use cases as well.
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* Additional use cases will be added in the next revision
capturing additional discussion from the list.
o Made significant updates to section 4 including:
* Renamed the section heading from "Use Cases" to "Functional
Capabilities" since use cases are covered in section 3. This
section now extrapolates specific functions that are needed to
support the use cases.
* Started work to flatten the section, moving select subsections
up from under asset management.
* Removed the subsections for: Asset Discovery, Endpoint
Components and Asset Composition, Asset Resources, and Asset
Life Cycle.
* Renamed the subsection "Asset Representation Reconciliation" to
"Deconfliction of Asset Identities".
* Expanded the subsections for: Asset Identification, Asset
Characterization, and Deconfliction of Asset Identities.
* Added a new subsection for Asset Targeting.
* Moved remaining sections to "Other Unedited Content" for future
updating.
8.2. draft-waltermire-sacm-use-cases-05 to draft-ietf-sacm-use-cases-00
o Transitioned from individual I/D to WG I/D based on WG consensus
call.
o Fixed a number of spelling errors. Thank you Erik!
o Added keywords to the front matter.
o Removed the terminology section from the draft. Terms have been
moved to: draft-dbh-sacm-terminology-00
o Removed requirements to be moved into a new I/D.
o Extracted the functionality from the examples and made the
examples less prominent.
o Renamed "Functional Capabilities and Requirements" section to "Use
Cases".
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* Reorganized the "Asset Management" sub-section. Added new text
throughout.
+ Renamed a few sub-section headings.
+ Added text to the "Asset Characterization" sub-section.
o Renamed "Security Configuration Management" to "Endpoint
Configuration Management". Not sure if the "security" distinction
is important.
* Added new sections, partially integrated existing content.
* Additional text is needed in all of the sub-sections.
o Changed "Security Change Management" to "Endpoint Posture Change
Management". Added new skeletal outline sections for future
updates.
8.3. -04- to -05-
o Are we including user activities and behavior in the scope of this
work? That seems to be layer 8 stuff, appropriate to an IDS/IPS
application, not Internet stuff.
o I removed the references to what the WG will do because this
belongs in the charter, not the (potentially long-lived) use cases
document. I removed mention of charter objectives because the
charter may go through multiple iterations over time; there is a
website for hosting the charter; this document is not the correct
place for that discussion.
o I moved the discussion of NIST specifications to the
acknowledgements section.
o Removed the portion of the introduction that describes the
chapters; we have a table of concepts, and the existing text
seemed redundant.
o Removed marketing claims, to focus on technical concepts and
technical analysis, that would enable subsequent engineering
effort.
o Removed (commented out in XML) UC2 and UC3, and eliminated some
text that referred to these use cases.
o Modified IANA and Security Consideration sections.
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o Moved Terms to the front, so we can use them in the subsequent
text.
o Removed the "Key Concepts" section, since the concepts of ORM and
IRM were not otherwise mentioned in the document. This would seem
more appropriate to the arch doc rather than use cases.
o Removed role=editor from David Waltermire's info, since there are
three editors on the document. The editor is most important when
one person writes the document that represents the work of
multiple people. When there are three editors, this role marking
isn't necessary.
o Modified text to describe that this was specific to enterprises,
and that it was expected to overlap with service provider use
cases, and described the context of this scoped work within a
larger context of policy enforcement, and verification.
o The document had asset management, but the charter mentioned
asset, change, configuration, and vulnerability management, so I
added sections for each of those categories.
o Added text to Introduction explaining goal of the document.
o Added sections on various example use cases for asset management,
config management, change management, and vulnerability
management.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
9.2. Informative References
[RFC0826] Plummer, D., "Ethernet Address Resolution Protocol: Or
converting network protocol addresses to 48.bit Ethernet
address for transmission on Ethernet hardware", STD 37,
RFC 826, November 1982.
[RFC1213] McCloghrie, K. and M. Rose, "Management Information Base
for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets:MIB-II",
STD 17, RFC 1213, March 1991.
[RFC2790] Waldbusser, S. and P. Grillo, "Host Resources MIB", RFC
2790, March 2000.
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[RFC2863] McCloghrie, K. and F. Kastenholz, "The Interfaces Group
MIB", RFC 2863, June 2000.
[RFC2922] Bierman, A. and K. Jones, "Physical Topology MIB", RFC
2922, September 2000.
[RFC4363] Levi, D. and D. Harrington, "Definitions of Managed
Objects for Bridges with Traffic Classes, Multicast
Filtering, and Virtual LAN Extensions", RFC 4363, January
2006.
[RFC5424] Gerhards, R., "The Syslog Protocol", RFC 5424, March 2009.
[RFC6933] Bierman, A., Romascanu, D., Quittek, J., and M.
Chandramouli, "Entity MIB (Version 4)", RFC 6933, May
2013.
Authors' Addresses
David Waltermire
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20877
USA
Email: david.waltermire@nist.gov
David Harrington
Effective Software
50 Harding Rd
Portsmouth, NH 03801
USA
Email: ietfdbh@comcast.net
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