Endpoint Security Posture Assessment: Enterprise Use Cases
RFC 7632
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) D. Waltermire
Request for Comments: 7632 NIST
Category: Informational D. Harrington
ISSN: 2070-1721 Effective Software
September 2015
Endpoint Security Posture Assessment: Enterprise Use Cases
Abstract
This memo documents a sampling of use cases for securely aggregating
configuration and operational data and evaluating 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 evaluating data relevant to security
posture.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7632.
Waltermire & Harrington Informational [Page 1]
RFC 7632 Enterprise Use Cases for Sec Assessment September 2015
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 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
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Endpoint Posture Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.1. Define, Publish, Query, and Retrieve Security
Automation Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1.2. Endpoint Identification and Assessment Planning . . . 9
2.1.3. Endpoint Posture Attribute Value Collection . . . . . 11
2.1.4. Posture Attribute Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2. Usage Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.1. Definition and Publication of Automatable
Configuration Checklists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.2. Automated Checklist Verification . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.3. Detection of Posture Deviations . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.4. Endpoint Information Analysis and Reporting . . . . . 18
2.2.5. Asynchronous Compliance/Vulnerability Assessment at
Ice Station Zebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.6. Identification and Retrieval of Guidance . . . . . . 20
2.2.7. Guidance Change Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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RFC 7632 Enterprise Use Cases for Sec Assessment September 2015
1. Introduction
This document describes the core set of use cases for endpoint
posture assessment for enterprises. It provides a discussion of
these use cases and associated building-block capabilities. The
described use cases support:
o securely collecting and aggregating configuration and operational
data, and
o evaluating that data to determine the security posture of
individual endpoints.
Additionally, this document describes a set of usage scenarios that
provide examples for using the use cases and associated building
blocks to address a variety of operational functions.
These operational use cases and related usage scenarios cross many IT
security domains. The use cases enable the derivation of common:
o concepts that are expressed as building blocks in this document,
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