Terminology for Security Assessment
draft-dbh-sacm-terminology-00

Abstract

This memo documents terminology used in the documents produced by the SACM WG (Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring).

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 February 11, 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 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
• 2. Terms and Definitions
• 2.1. Requirements Language
• 3. IANA Considerations
• 4. Security Considerations
• 5. Acknowledgements
• 6. Change Log
• 6.1. -00- draft
• 7. References
• 7.1. Normative References
• 7.2. Informative References
• Authors' Addresses

1. Introduction

Our goal with this document is to improve our agreement on the terminology used in documents produced by the IETF Working Group for Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring. Agreeing on terminology should help reach consensus on which problems we're trying to solve, and propose solutions and decide which ones to use.

This document is expected to be temorary work product, and will probably be incorporated into the architecture or other document.

2. 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."
• 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

• 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.

2.1. 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].

3. IANA Considerations

This memo includes no request to IANA.

4. Security Considerations

This memo documents terminology for security automation. While it is about security, it does not affect security.

5. Acknowledgements

6. Change Log

6.1. -00- draft

7. References

7.1. Normative References

7.2. Informative References

Authors' Addresses