Analysis of Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring (SACM) Use Cases
draft-waltermire-sacm-use-cases-04
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| Document | Type |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | David Waltermire , Adam W. Montville | ||
| Last updated | 2013-02-10 | ||
| Replaced by | draft-ietf-sacm-use-cases, RFC 7632 | ||
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draft-waltermire-sacm-use-cases-04
Network Working Group D. Waltermire, Ed.
Internet-Draft NIST
Intended status: Informational A. Montville
Expires: August 15, 2013 TW
February 11, 2013
Analysis of Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring (SACM) Use
Cases
draft-waltermire-sacm-use-cases-04
Abstract
This document identifies use cases, derived functional capabilities,
and requirements needed to provide a foundation for creating
interoperable automation tools and continuous monitoring solutions
that provide visibility into the state of endpoints, user activities,
and network behavior. Stakeholders will be able to use these tools
to aggregate and analyze relevant security and operational data to
understand the organizations security posture, quantify business
risk, and make informed decisions that support organizational
objectives while protecting critical information. Organizations will
be able to use these tools to augment and automate information
sharing activities to collaborate with partners to identify and
mitigate threats. Other automation tools will be able to integrate
with these capabilities to enforce policies based on human decisions
to harden systems, prevent misuse and reduce the overall attack
surface.
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-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
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 August 15, 2013.
Copyright Notice
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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
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Key Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1. UC1: Endpoint Posture Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1.1. Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1.2. Main Success Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. UC2: Enforcement of Acceptable State . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.1. Goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.2. Main Success Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3. UC3: Security Control Verification and Monitoring . . . . 8
3.3.1. Goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.2. Main Success Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4. Functional Capabilities and Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1. Capabilities Supporting UC1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1.1. Asset Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1.1.1. Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1.1.2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1.2. Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1.2.1. Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1.2.2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.3. Assessment Result Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.1.3.1. Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.1.3.2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.1.4. Content Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.1.4.1. Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.1.4.2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2. Capabilities Supporting UC2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.1. Assessment Query and Transport . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.2. Acceptable State Enforcement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3. Capabilities Supporting UC3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3.1. Tasking and Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3.2. Data Aggregation and Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
7. Terms and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
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1. Introduction
This document addresses foundational use cases in security
automation. These use cases may be considered when establishing a
charter for the Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring (SACM)
working group within the IETF. This working group will address as
many of the standards needed to define an interoperable, automation
infrastructure required to support timely, accurate and actionable
situational awareness over an organization's IT assets. This
document enumerates use cases and breaks down related concepts and
related requirements for capabilities that cross many IT security
information domains.
Sections Section 2, Section 3, and Section 4 of this document
respectively focus on:
Defining the key concepts used within the document providing a
common frame of reference;
Identifying foundational use cases that represent classes of
stakeholders, goals, and usage scenarios;
A set of derived functional capabilities and associated
requirements that are needed to support the use cases;
The concepts identified in this document provide a foundation for
creating interoperable automation tools and continuous monitoring
solutions that provide visibility into the posture of endpoints, user
activities, and network behavior. Stakeholders will be able to use
these tools to aggregate and analyze relevant security and
operational data to understand the organizations security posture,
quantify business risk, and make informed decisions that support
organizational objectives while protecting critical information.
Organizations will be able to use these tools to augment and automate
information sharing activities to collaborate with partners to
identify and mitigate threats. Other automation tools will be able
to integrate with these capabilities to enforce policies based on
human decisions to harden systems, prevent misuse and reduce the
overall attack surface.
1.1. 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].
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2. Key Concepts
The operational methods we use within the bounds of our present
realities are failing us - we are falling behind. We have begun to
recognize that the evolution of threat agents, increasing system
complexity, rapid situational security change, and scarce resources
are detrimental to our success. There have been efforts to remedy
our circumstance, and these efforts are generally known as "Security
Automation."
Security Automation is a general term used to reference
specifications originally created by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) and/or the MITRE Corporation.
Security Automation generally includes languages, protocols
(prescribed ways by which specification collections are used),
enumerations, and metrics.
These specifications have provided an opportunity for tool vendors
and enterprises building customized solutions to take the appropriate
steps toward enabling Security Automation by defining common
information expressions. In effect, common expression of information
enables interoperability between tools (whether customized,
commercial, or freely available). Another important capability
common expression provides is 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 within the processes in which they participate.
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+---------------------------------------+ +-------------+
| | | |
| Operational Risk Management | | |
| | | |
+---------------------------------------+ | |
| |
+---------------------------------------+ | |
| | | |
| Information Risk Management | | Policy |
| | | Process |
+---------------------------------------+ | Procedure |
| |
+---------------------------------------+ | |
| | | |
| Control Frameworks | | |
| | | |
+---------------------------------------+ | |
| |
+---------------------------------------+ | |
| | | |
| Controls | | |
| | | |
+---------------------------------------+ +-------------+
Figure 1
The figure above provides some context for our focus area.
Organizations of all sizes will have a more or less formal risk
management program, depending upon their maturity and organization-
specific needs. A small business with only a few employees may not
have a formally recognized risk management program, but they still
lock the doors at night. Typically, financial entities and
governments sit at the other end of the spectrum with often large,
laborious risk frameworks. The point is that all organizations
practice, to some degree, Operational Risk Management (ORM). An
Information Risk Management (IRM) program is most likely a
constituent of ORM (another constituent might be Financial Risk
Management). In the Information Risk Management domain, we often use
control frameworks to provide guidance for organizations practicing
ORM in an information context, and these control frameworks define a
variety of controls.
From ORM, IRM, control frameworks, and the controls themselves,
organizations derive a set of organization-specific policies,
processes, and procedures. Such policies, processes, and procedures
make use of a library of supporting information commonly stipulated
by the organization (i.e. enterprise acceptable use policies), but
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often prescribed by external entities (i.e. Payment Card Industry
Data Security Standards, Sarbanes-Oxley, or EU Data Privacy
Directive). The focus of this document spans controls, certain
aspects of policy, process, and procedure, and control frameworks.
3. Use Cases
This document addresses three use cases: Endpoint Posture Assessment,
Enforcement of Acceptable State, Security Control Verification and
Monitoring. Currently, the first use case, Endpoint Posture
Assessment, is being pursued under the SACM charter. The additional
use cases are included to provide broader context to this work and
represents additional work that may be considered by SACM or another
IETF working group in the future.
3.1. UC1: Endpoint Posture Assessment
The Endpoint Posture Assessment use case involves collecting
information about the posture of a given endpoint. This posture
information is gathered and then published to appropriate data
repositories to make collected information available for further
analysis supporting organizational security processes.
3.1.1. Goals
The primary goals of the endpoint Posture Assessment use case is:
o To collect the posture of a given endpoint;
o Make that posture available to the enterprise for further analysis
and action; and
o To assess that the endpoint's posture is in compliance with
enterprise standards and, therefore, ensure alignment with
enterprise policy.
3.1.2. Main Success Scenario
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
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5. Communicate target identity and collected posture to external
system for evaluation
6. Compare collected posture attributes from the target endpoint
with expected state values as expressed in acceptable state
policies
3.2. UC2: Enforcement of Acceptable State
Controlling access to a desired resource based on the compliance of
an endpoint or user with enterprise policy.
3.2.1. Goal
Allow or deny access to a desired resource based on the compliance of
an endpoint or user with enterprise policy.
3.2.2. Main Success Scenario
1. An entity (user on an endpoint or the endpoint itself) requests
access to a given resource (i.e. network connection, service)
2. Assessment of endpoint posture is achieved using UC1: Endpoint
Posture Assessment
3. Based on assessment results (i.e. compliance level with
enterprise policy)
A. Endpoint or user is allowed access to requested resource, or
B. Endpoint or user is denied access to requested resource
3.3. UC3: Security Control Verification and Monitoring
This use case involves continuous (uninterrupted) and continual
(periodic) monitoring of a set of target endpoints to determine the
degree of compliance with acceptable state policies within an
enterprise.
3.3.1. Goal
Continuous assessment of the implementation and effectiveness of
security controls based on machine processable content.
3.3.2. Main Success Scenario
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1. Define set of target endpoints to be assessed.
2. Select acceptable state policies to apply to set of target
endpoints
3. Define assessment trigger based on either a
A. Time period, or
B. An event (e.g. endpoint, network, organizational).
4. Define result reporting/alerting criteria
5. Enable continuous assessment
4. Functional Capabilities and Requirements
In general, the activities of managing assets, configurations, and
vulnerabilities are common between UC1, UC2, and UC3. UC2 uses these
activities to either grant or deny an entity access to a requested
resource. UC3 uses these activities in support of compliance
measurement on a periodic basis.
At the most basic level, an enterprise needing to satisfy these use
cases will need certain capabilities to be met. Specifically, we are
talking about risk management capabilities. This is the central
problem domain, so it makes sense to be able to convey information
about technical and non-technical controls, benchmarks, control
requirements, control frameworks and other concepts in a common way.
4.1. Capabilities Supporting UC1
The capabilities in this section support assessing endpoint posture
in an automated manner as described in Section Section 3.1.
4.1.1. Asset Management
Organizations manage a variety of assets within their enterprise.
Supporting the use cases in this document requires management of
assets including: endpoints, the hardware they are composed of,
installed software, hardware/software licenses used, and any
appropriate configurations. Effective Asset Management is a critical
foundation upon which all else in risk management is based. There
are two important facets to asset management: 1) understanding
coverage (what and how many assets are under control) and, 2)
understanding specific asset details. Coverage is fairly
straightforward - assessing 80% of the enterprise assets is better
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than assessing 50% of the enterprise assets. Getting asset details
is comparatively subtle - if an enterprise does not have a precise
understanding of its assets, then all acquired data and consequent
actions taken based on the data are considered suspect. Assessing
assets (managed and unmanaged) requires that we have visibility into
the posture of endpoints, the ability to understand the composition
and relationships between different assets types, and the ability to
properly characterize them at the outset and over time.
4.1.1.1. Concepts
Managing endpoints and the different types of assets that compose
them involves initially discovering and characterizing each asset
instance, and then identify them in a common way. Characterization
may take the form of logical characterization or security
characterization, where logical characterization may include business
context not otherwise related to security, but which may be used as
information in support of decision making later in risk management
workflows.
The following list details the requisite Asset Management
capabilities:
o Discover assets in the enterprise
o For a given endpoint, understand the composition and relationship
of its constituent assets
o Characterize assets according to security and non-security asset
properties
o Identify and describe assets using a common vocabulary between
implementations
o Reconcile asset representations originating from disparate tools
o Manage asset information throughout the asset's life cycle
4.1.1.2. Requirements
A method MUST be provided for identifying an endpoint (asset
identification) as a unique entity within the enterprise.
The endpoint identifier SHOULD be able to be determined in an
automated manner.
The endpoint identifier, as communicated between entities, SHOULD
be held to a minimal size.
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A method MUST be provided for defining an endpoint (asset
classification) based on a set of organizationally relevant
properties (e.g. organizational affiliation, criticality, function).
4.1.2. Data Collection
Related to managing the assets related to endpoints, and central to
any automated assessment solution, is the ability to collect data
from (or related to) an endpoint (some might call this "harvesting").
Of particular interest is data representing the security state of the
endpoint and its constituent assets. The primary interest of the
activities demanding data collection is centered on policy attribute
collection related to installed hardware and software configuration
items, and network device configuration items among others.
4.1.2.1. Concepts
There are many valid perspectives to take when considering required
data collection capabilities. The nature of data collected relating
to endpoints supports a variety of information domains including:
security configuration management (SCM) and vulnerability management.
SCM deals with the configuration of endpoints (infrastructure devices
and computing hosts) including the software installed and in use on
these devices. 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 in-scope 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.
The following assessment capabilities support SCM relative to a
target asset:
o Collect the state of technical controls including, but not
necessarily limited to:
* Software inventory (e.g. operating system, applications,
patches)
* Configuration settings
o Collect the state of non-technical controls commonly called
administrative controls (i.e. policy, process, procedure)
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4.1.2.2. Requirements
One or more data formats MUST be identified to describe instructions,
data collection methods, to drive data collection (e.g. technical,
interrogative).
One or more data formats MUST be identified to instruct what posture
attributes need to be collected for a specific set of endpoints.
A method MUST be provided to include OPTIONAL instructions on
describing what content must be run on the endpoint.
A method MUST be provided to include OPTIONAL instructions that
determine how to collect data supporting any particular test for
that endpoint.
A method MUST be provided for retrieving data collection instructions
from a remote host (see Section Section 4.1.4).
One or more data formats MUST be identified to capture the results of
data collection.
This expression MUST be capable of supporting the characterization
of assets and any related configuration settings that together
compose an endpoint.
A mechanism MUST be provided to identify the software and
hardware asset instances that compose an endpoint.
An asset identifier SHOULD be able to be determined in an
automated manner
An asset identifier, as communicated between entities,
SHOULD be held to a minimal size.
An asset identifier SHOULD be able to represented in a
simple unambiguous manner, such as a reference, so that its
embedded use in places like applicability clauses for
individual benchmark tests can be kept from making their
usage unwieldy.
A mechanism MUST be provided to associate configuration
settings values to the installed software.
A mechanism MUST be provided to identify additional collected
posture attribute/value pairs related to an endpoint.
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A mechanism MUST be provided to identify the endpoint the results
pertain to (see Section Section 4.1.1.
A mechanism MUST be provided to associate the data collection
method with the collected value.
A mechanism MUST be provided to include provenance information
describing what sensor of software collected the data.
A mechanism MUST be provided to include entailment information,
perhaps by reference, describing the methodology used to collect
the data.
A method of communicating data collection results to another system
for further analysis MUST be identified.
TODO: Communicate, unambiguously and to the necessary level of
detail**, the asset details between software components
4.1.3. Assessment Result Analysis
At the most basic level, 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.
4.1.3.1. Concepts
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
4.1.3.2. Requirements
A method MUST be provided for selecting acceptable state policy,
describing how to evaluate collected information, based on
characteristics of the endpoint and organizational policy.
A method MUST be provided for comparing collected data to expected
state values (test evaluation).
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Any results produced by analysis processes MUST be capable of being
transformed into a human-readable format.
4.1.4. Content Management
It should be clear by now that 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.
4.1.4.1. Concepts
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
o Asset characterization data and rules
Note that the ability to modify content is in direct support of
tailoring content for enterprise-specific needs.
4.1.4.2. Requirements
A protocol MUST be identified for retrieving SACM content from a
content repository
A protocol MUST be identified for querying SACM content held in a
content repository. The protocol MUST support querying content by
applicability to asset characteristics.
TODO: Determine what content can or must be run on the endpoint
A protocol MUST be identified for curating SACM content in a content
repository. Note: This might be an area where we can limit the scope
of work relative to the initial SACM charter.
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4.2. Capabilities Supporting UC2
UC2 is dependent upon UC1 and, therefore, includes all of the
capabilities described in Section Section 4.1. UC2 describes the
ability to make a resource access decision based on an assessment of
the requesting system (either by the system itself or on behalf of a
user operating that system). There are two chief capabilities
required to meet the needs expressed in Section Section 3.2:
Assessment Query and Transport, and Acceptable State Enforcement.
4.2.1. Assessment Query and Transport
Under certain circumstances, the system requesting access may be
unknown, which can make querying the system problematic (consider a
case where a system is connecting to the network and has no
assessment software installed). Note that The Network Endpoint
Assessment (NEA) protocols (PA-TNC [RFC5792], PB-TNC [RFC5793], PT-
TLS [I-D.ietf-nea-pt-tls], and PT-EAP [I-D.ietf-nea-pt-eap]) may be
used to query and transport the things to be measured.
4.2.2. Acceptable State Enforcement
Once the assessment has been performed a decision to allow or deny
access to the requested resource can be made. Making this decision
is a necessary but insufficient condition for enforcement of
acceptable state, and an implementation must have the ability to
actively allow or deny access to the requested resource. For
example, network enforcement may be implemented with RADIUS [RFC2865]
or DIAMETER [RFC6733].
4.3. Capabilities Supporting UC3
Recall that UC3 is dependent upon UC1 and therefore includes all of
the capabilities described in Section 4.1. The difference in UC3 is
the notion of when to assess rather than what to assess. Therefore,
the capabilities described in this section are relevant only to the
"when" and not to the "what."
4.3.1. Tasking and Scheduling
The ability to task and schedule assessments is requisite for any
effective risk management program. Tasking refers to the ability to
create a set of instructions to be conveyed at a later time via
scheduling. Tasking, therefore, involves selecting a set of
assessment criteria, assigning that set to a group of assets, and
expressing that information in a manner that can be consumed by a
collection tool. Scheduling comes into play when the enterprise
determines when to perform a specific assessment task (or set of
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tasks). Scheduling may be expressed in a way that constrains tasks
to execute only during defined periods, can be ad hoc, or may be
triggered by the analysis of previous assessment results or events
detected in the enterprise.
The following capabilities support Tasking and Scheduling:
o Selection of assessment criteria
o Defining in-scope assets (i.e. targeting)
o Defining periodic assessments for a given set of tasks
o Defining assessment triggers for a given set of tasks
4.3.2. Data Aggregation and Reporting
Assessment results are produced for every asset assessed, and these
results must be reported not only individually, but in the aggregate,
and in accordance with enterprise needs. Enterprises should be able
to aggregate and report on the data their assessments produce in a
number of different ways in order to support different levels of
decision making. At times, security operations personnel may be
interested in understanding where the most critical risks exist in
their enterprise so as to focus their remediation efforts in the most
effective way (in terms of cost and return). At other times, only
aggregated scores will matter, as might be the case when reporting to
an information security manager or other executive-level role.
It is not the position of these capabilities to provide explicit
details about how reports should be formatted for presentation, but
only what information they should contain for a particular purpose.
Furthermore, it is quite easy to imagine the need for a capability
providing extensibility to aggregation and reporting.
Aggregating assessment results by the following capabilities supports
Data Aggregation and Reporting
o By asset characterization
o By assessment criteria
o By control framework
o By benchmark
o By other attributes/properties of assessment characteristics
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o Extensible aggregation and reporting
5. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
All drafts are required to have an IANA considerations section (see
RFC 5226 [RFC5226] for a guide). If the draft does not require IANA
to do anything, the section contains an explicit statement that this
is the case (as above). If there are no requirements for IANA, the
section will be removed during conversion into an RFC by the RFC
Editor.
6. Security Considerations
All drafts are required to have a security considerations section.
See RFC 3552 [RFC3552] for a guide.
This section needs to be fleshed out to include concerns including:
o Authentication
o Authorization
o Endpoint and user identity management
o Encryption of communications
o Content signing and validation
o etc...
While not strictly a security concern, network bandwidth and similar
communications requirements also need to be addressed.
7. Terms and Definitions
assessment
Defined in [RFC5209] as "the process of collecting posture for a
set of capabilities on the endpoint (e.g., host-based firewall)
such that the appropriate validators may evaluate the posture
against compliance policy."
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Within this document the use of the term is expanded to support
other uses of collected posture (e.g. reporting, network
enforcement, vulnerability detection, license management). The
phrase "set of capabilities on the endpoint" includes: hardware
and software installed on the endpoint."
asset
Defined in [RFC4949] as "a system resource that is (a) required to
be protected by an information system's security policy, (b)
intended to be protect by a countermeasure, or (c) required for a
system's mission.
attribute
Defined in [RFC5209] as "data element including any requisite
meta-data describing an observed, expected, or the operational
status of an endpoint feature (e.g., anti-virus software is
currently in use)."
endpoint
Defined in [RFC5209] as "any computing device that can be
connected to a network. Such devices normally are associated with
a particular link layer address before joining the network and
potentially an IP address once on the network. This includes:
laptops, desktops, servers, cell phones, or any device that may
have an IP address."
Network infrastructure devices (e.g. switches, routers,
firewalls), which fit the definition, are also considered to be
endpoints within this document.
Based on the previous definition of an asset, an endpoint is a
type of asset.
posture
Defined in [RFC5209] as "configuration and/or status of hardware
or software on an endpoint as it pertains to an organization's
security policy."
This term is used within the scope of this document to represent
the state information that is collected from an endpoint (e.g.
software/hardware inventory, configuration settings).
posture attributes
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Defined in [RFC5209] as "attributes describing the configuration
or status (posture) of a feature of the endpoint. For example, a
Posture Attribute might describe the version of the operating
system installed on the system."
Within this document this term represents a specific assertion
about endpoint state (e.g. configuration setting, installed
software, hardware). The phrase "features of the endpoint" refers
to installed software or software components.
system resource
Defined in [RFC4949] as "data contained in an information system;
or a service provided by a system; or a system capacity, such as
processing power or communication bandwidth; or an item of system
equipment (i.e., hardware, firmware, software, or documentation);
or a facility that houses system operations and equipment.
8. Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Kathleen Moriarty and Stephen Hanna
for contributing text to this document. The author 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.
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
[I-D.ietf-nea-pt-eap]
Cam-Winget, N. and P. Sangster, "PT-EAP: Posture Transport
(PT) Protocol For EAP Tunnel Methods",
draft-ietf-nea-pt-eap-06 (work in progress),
December 2012.
[I-D.ietf-nea-pt-tls]
Sangster, P., Cam-Winget, N., and J. Salowey, "PT-TLS: A
TLS-based Posture Transport (PT) Protocol",
draft-ietf-nea-pt-tls-08 (work in progress), October 2012.
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[RFC2865] Rigney, C., Willens, S., Rubens, A., and W. Simpson,
"Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)",
RFC 2865, June 2000.
[RFC3552] Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552,
July 2003.
[RFC4949] Shirey, R., "Internet Security Glossary, Version 2",
RFC 4949, August 2007.
[RFC5209] Sangster, P., Khosravi, H., Mani, M., Narayan, K., and J.
Tardo, "Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA): Overview and
Requirements", RFC 5209, June 2008.
[RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
May 2008.
[RFC5792] Sangster, P. and K. Narayan, "PA-TNC: A Posture Attribute
(PA) Protocol Compatible with Trusted Network Connect
(TNC)", RFC 5792, March 2010.
[RFC5793] Sahita, R., Hanna, S., Hurst, R., and K. Narayan, "PB-TNC:
A Posture Broker (PB) Protocol Compatible with Trusted
Network Connect (TNC)", RFC 5793, March 2010.
[RFC6733] Fajardo, V., Arkko, J., Loughney, J., and G. Zorn,
"Diameter Base Protocol", RFC 6733, October 2012.
Authors' Addresses
David Waltermire (editor)
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20877
USA
Phone:
Email: david.waltermire@nist.gov
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Adam W. Montville
Tripwire, Inc.
101 SW Main Street, Suite 1500
Portland, Oregon 97204
USA
Phone:
Email: amontville@tripwire.com
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