| SACM | D. Waltermire, Ed. |
| Internet-Draft | NIST |
| Intended status: Informational | K. Watson |
| Expires: January 7, 2016 | DHS |
| C. Kahn | |
| L. Lorenzin | |
| Pulse Secure, LLC | |
| July 6, 2015 |
SACM Information Model
draft-ietf-sacm-information-model-02
This document proposes an information model for SACM.
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This document defines a notional information model for endpoint posture assessment. It describes the information needed to perform certain assessment activities. The scope of the information model is to describe the structure of the information carried to realize the assessment. It is meant to be a basis for the development of specific data models. The terms information model and data model loosely align with the definitions in RFC3444 [RFC3444].
The four primary activities to support this information model are:
These activities are aimed at the level of the technology that performs operations to support collection, evaluation, and reporting.
Review of the SACM Use Case [I-D.ietf-sacm-use-cases] usage scenarios show a common set of business process areas that are critical to understanding endpoint posture such that appropriate policies, security capabilities, and decisions can be developed and implemented.
For this information model we have chosen to focus on the following business process areas:
These management process areas are a way to connect the SACM use cases and building blocks [I-D.ietf-sacm-use-cases] to the organizational needs such that the definition of information requirements has a clearly understood context.(/wandw)
The SACM information model offers a loose coupling between providers and consumers of security information. A provider can relay what it observes or infers, without knowing which consumers will use the information, or how they will use it. A consumer need not know exactly which provider generated a piece of information, or by what method.
At the same time, a consumer *can* know these things, if necessary.
As things evolve, a provider can relay supplemental information. Some consumers will understand and benefit from the supplemental information; other consumers will not understand and will disregard it.
Renamed "credential" to "identity", following industry usage. A credential includes proof, such as a key or password. A username or a distinguished name is called an "identity".
Removed Session, because an endpoint's network activity is not SACM's initial focus
Removed Authorization, for the same reason
Added many-to-many relationship between Hardware Component and Endpoint, for clarity
Added many-to-many relationship between Software Component and Endpoint, for clarity
Added "contains" relationship between Network Interface and Network Interface
Removed relationship between Network Interface and Account. The endpoint knows the identity it used to gain network access. The PDP also knows that. But they probably do not know the account.
Added relationship between Network Interface and Identity. The endpoint and the PDP will typically know the identity.
Made identity-to-account a many-to-one relationship.
Added Section 4.1, Identifying Attributes.
Split the figure into Figure 1 and Figure 2.
Added Figure 3, proposing a triple-store model.
Some editorial cleanup
TODO: revise
(wandw)SACM requires a large and broad set of mission and business processes, and to make the most effective of use of technology, the same data must support multiple processes. The activities and processes described within this document tend to build off of each other to enable more complex characterization and assessment. In an effort to create an information model that serves a common set of management processes represented by the usage scenarios in the SACM Use Cases document, we have narrowed down the scope of this model.(/wandw) [What does "narrowed down the scope of this model" mean? - LL]
Administrators can't get technology from disparate sources to work together; they need information to make decisions, but the information is not available. Everyone is collecting the same data, but storing it as different information. Administrators therefore need to collect data and craft their own information, which may not be accurate or interoperable because it's customized by each administrator, not shared. A standard information model enables flexibility in collecting, storing, and sharing information despite platform differences.
A way is needed to exchange information that (a) has breadth, meaning the pieces of the notation are useful about a variety of endpoints and software components, and (b) has longevity, meaning that the pieces of the notation will stay useful over time.
When creating standards, it's not sufficient to go from requirements directly to protocol; the standards must eliminate ambiguity in the information transported. This is the purpose of information models generally. The SACM problem space is about integrating many information sources. This information model addresses the need to integrate security components, support multiple data models, and provide interoperability in a way that is platform agnostic, scales, and works over time.
TODO: revise
(wandw)This information model directly corresponds to all four use cases defined in the SACM Use Cases draft [I-D.ietf-sacm-use-cases]. It uses these use cases in coordination to achieve a small set of well-defined tasks.
Sections [removed] thru [removed] address each of the process areas. For each process area, a "Process Area Description" sub-section represent an end state that is consistent with all the General Requirements and many of the Use Case Requirements identified in the requirements draft [I-D.ietf-sacm-requirements].
The management process areas and supporting operations defined in this memo directly support REQ004 Endpoint Discovery; REQ005-006 Attribute and Information Based Queries, and REQ0007 Asynchronous Publication.
In addition, the operations that defined for each business process in this memo directly correlate with the typical workflow identified in the SACM Use Case document.(/wandw)
How to refer to an endpoint is problematic. Ideally, an endpoint would have a unique identifier. These identifiers would have a one-to-one relationship with endpoints. Every observation of an endpoint, or inference about an endpoint would be labeled with its identifier.
However:
So SACM components must be able to put disparate observations together and form a picture of an endpoint -- somewhat like a detective. The SACM information model must facilitate this.
With many information models, the information is considered certain. In SACM, information is not certain. Attackers may develop countermeasures to fool some SACM components. Attackers may compromise some SACM components.
So the model must let SACM components and humans reason with uncertainty. There are no facts, only assertions.
SACM components must be able to cross check observations and inferences against each other. They should be able to give weight if an observation or inference is corroborated by more than one method. Although SACM will probably not prescribe *how* to do this cross checking, SACM should provide the components with provenance information.
SACM components must be able to consider the reputation of the observer or inferrer. That reputation should account for the method of observing or inferring, the implementer of the SACM component that made the observation or inference, and the compliance status of the endpoint on which the observation or inference was made. For example, if some observers are found to be vulnerable to a Day 1 exploit, observations from those observers deserve less weight. The details of reputation technology may be out of scope for SACM. However, again, SACM should provide components with provenance information.
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].
The SACM Information Model contains several elements of the architecture, including:
The SACM Information Model does not (in this draft) specify how long information is retained. Historical information is modeled the same way as current information. Historical information may be represented differently in an implementation, but that difference would be in data models, not in the information model.
Figure 1 introduces the endpoint attributes and their relationships.
+---------+*______in>_______*+-----+
|Hardware | |! !|
|Component| +---------+ |! !| +--------+*________________
+---------+ |Software |in> |! !|*_____*|Location|___________ <in|
1| |Component|____|! !| in> +--------+* <in *| |
| +---------+* *|! !| +-------+ |
| 1| |! !| |Account| |
| *| | | +----------+ +-------+ |
| +---------+ |End- |*_____*| Identity |_________|0..1 |
*| |Software |in> |point| acts +----------+* belongs |
+---------+ |Instance |____| | for> 0..1|^ to> |
|Hardware | +---------+* 1|! !| |acts |
|Instance |__________________|! !| *|for |*
+---------+* in> 1|! !|_______+---------+ +-------+
|! !|1 <in *|Network |1_______*|Address|
|! !|____ |Interface| <bound +-------+
|! !|0..1| +---------+ to
+-----+ | *| |0..1
|* | |___|
|_______| in>
in>
Figure 1: Model of an Endpoint
ISSUE (CEK): we agreed to remove location and account from the model, did we not?
Figure 2 is the core of the information model. It represents the information elements and their relationships.
+-----+ +---------+
| AVP |____________|Endpoint |
+-----+1..* 1|Attribute|
|Assertion|
+---------+
|* +-------+
| |Summary|
| +-------+
|produced-by *|
|V |
1| |
+--------+ +-----------+ |
| | | SACM |__________________________|
|Guidance| | Component |1 <produced-by
+--------+*____________1+-----------+
<produced-by
Figure 2: Information Elements
Figure 3 is a potential alternative structure for assertions. It is inspired by triple stores. See http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-rdf11-concepts-20140225/.
+-----+______________+---------+ +---------+
| AVP |1 <subject *|assertion|________________|predicate|
| |______________| |* predicate> 1+---------+
+-----+1 <object *+---------+
1^ |*
|_____________________|
<asserter
Figure 3: Information Elements, Take 2
Note: UML 2 is specified by [UML].
TODO: update text to match new figure:
Need to be clear in the description that ???
For some of the relationships, will need some language and guidance to the interfaces and relationships we expect to have happen, MUSTs and SHOULDs, as well as explaining the extensibility that other relationships can exist, show examples of how that can happen. Others that we haven't thought of yet, might be added by another RFC or in another way
Identifying attributes let a consumer identify an endpoint, for two purposes:
Out of scope of this section: *classifying* an endpoint so as to apply appropriate collection guidance to it. We don't call this "identification".
Each attribute-value pair or triple MUST be marked with how the provider knows. There MUST be at least one marking. The possible markings follow.
TODO: Explain security considerations and how consumers are meant to use these markings.
When publishing an endpoint attribute assertion, the provider MUST publish at least all common identifying AVPs that it knows through verification. If the provider knows none through verification but it knows at least one in another way, it MUST publish at least one. The provider SHOULD publish all common identifying AVPs it knows.
MUST be an IPv4 or IPv6 address, and optionally a scope string. MUST NOT be a broadcast, multicast, or loopback address.
An IPv4 address MUST conform to [RFC0791], section 3.2.
An IPv6 address MUST conform to [RFC3587]. SHOULD NOT be a link-local address.
Scope string: an administratively assigned string denoting the IP routing domain. Implementations MUST support this. Administrators may use it to avoid ambiguity, for example if network address translation (NAT) is in use.
ISSUE (Jim Schaad): Scope strings are interesting. However does this imply a potential need to create a new DHCP item so that it can be sent out to a device for reporting back? Is there such a string already?
(Cliff): Scope strings are like administrative-domain in IF-MAP. It would solve many problems if DHCP servers could provide this string to endpoints and to observers. I am not sure whether there is a standard DHCP option that fills the bill or not. I am not sure how easily application software can get the DHCP options from the underlying OS. But this is worth exploring.
(Jim): We may need to look at what happens if a scope identifier is either not set or not available. I am thinking of the virtual network that is NATed on my machine. If those VMs reported [on themselves] then the network configuring systems may not know about that VM and there would not necessarily be a reasonable scope string to report for it.
Throughout the time interval of the AVP, the endpoint had the right to use, or was communicating using, the specified IP address.
A network profiler might know an endpoint's address and something about the software running on the endpoint. The profiler might know nothing else. So data models MUST support an endpoint attribute assertion relating the IP address to a set of software components.
A data model MUST support the following relationships:
An endpoint attribute assertion MAY contain one or more IP addresses.
An IP address may be used by more than one endpoint at a time, largely because of Network Address Translation (NAT). Where practical, a scope string SHOULD be included, to disambiguate.
In practice, an IP address can be used by only one endpoint in an IP routing domain at a time.
The stability of IP address assignments varies widely. Some assignments are persistent, some volatile. The time interval of the AVP MUST NOT reach into the future, not even if (for example) the DHCP lease is infinite.
For IP addresses that a provider knows by observation or verification:
For IP addresses that a provider knows by observation or verification, IP address spoofing is a pitfall. Network administrators SHOULD take countermeasures. Ingress filtering (RFC3704) is one. DHCP snooping is another: many Network Access Devices can confine endpoints to IP addresses assigned by authorized DHCP servers.
All SACM data models MUST support this entire subsection.
TODO
MUST be a vendor ID string and a serial number string string. The vendor ID string MAY be empty, a URI, or a vendor number.
Throughout the time interval of the AVP, the endpoint had a hardware component by the indicated manufacturer and having the specified serial number.
An endpoint may have any number of hardware instances, each with a different serial number. An endpoint attribute assertion may contain AVPs for any subset of the hardware instances.
Vendors generally ensure that each serial number goes to only one hardware instance.
Each hardware component is immutably associated with a hardware serial number. But hardware can be replaced or removed. As endpoint attributes, hardware serial numbers are *persistent* but not *immutable*.
All SACM data models MUST support this entire subsection.
MUST be X.509 certificate, per [RFC5280].
Throughout the time interval of the AVP, the endpoint had the private key corresponding to the specified certificate.
Throughout the time interval, the certificate was valid: it had a valid certificate chain from a CA certificate that the asserter trusted; every certificate in the chain was time-valid; no certificate in in the chain (excluding the CA certificate) was revoked. ISSUE (CEK): Do we want to get this PKI-ish? If so, would we include the CA certificate as well?
An endpoint may use, or have the right to use, one or more certificates.
Some certificates may be used on more than one endpoint. Other certificates are (by intent) bound to a single endpoint. ISSUE (CEK): Is there a standard way to distinguish the two? We could perhaps provide a configurable criterion, as an information element. Should we?
Certificates are replaced, due to expiration and other reasons. By and large, they are not replaced often. A year is a typical interval. In sum, they are persistent.
A private key is baked into hardware is almost immutable. But again, hardware can be replaced.
If a certificate is known by verification, the attribute is highly accurate.
All SACM data models MUST support this entire subsection.
TODO
ISSUE (CEK): If a user certificate can be an identifying attribute, why not a username also? At an earlier stage of our discussions, usernames were considered common identifying attributes. Did we decide they should not be? Or just forget them?
Many endpoints do not have client certificates. An authenticated username is a useful clue for identifying such an endpoint. I log in only to a handful of personal endpoints. I also present my username and password to many multi-user servers. We would have to distinguish personal endpoints from server endpoints somehow.
TODO
TODO: "Tool-specific identifier" suggests that two tools could never agree on a tool-specific identifier. But a community may agree on an identifier notation, and might even create a formal standard. All that's important is that each of these attributes has a type and meaning *not* specified by the SACM internet drafts. "Vendor-specific identifier?" "Custom identifier?"
Every information element needs identifying attributes of its producer's endpoint. (TODO: Provide normative language. SHOULD? MUST?)
Specifically, in an endpoint attribute assertion, we need identifying attributes of the asserter's endpoint. If the asserter is external, the assertion will contain identifying attributes of two endpoints. (TODO: Discuss what this information is for.)
Effects of misidentification
Things that can cause misidentification
How minimize misidentification
An endpoint contains and runs software components.
Relationship:
Some software components are assets. "Asset" is defined in RFC4949 [RFC4949] as "a system resource that is (a) required to be protected by an information system's security policy, (b) intended to be protected by a countermeasure, or (c) required for a system's mission."
An examination of software needs to consider both (a) software assets and (b) software that may do harm. A posture attribute collector may not know (a) from (b). It is useful to define Software Component as the union of (a) and (b).
Examples of Software Assets:
Examples of harmful software components:
Software components SHOULD be disjoint from each other. In other words, software componennts SHOULD be so defined that a given byte of software on an endpoint belongs to only one software component.
Different versions of the same piece of software MUST be modeled as different components. Software versioning is not built into the information model.
Each separately installable piece of software SHOULD be modeled as a component. Sometimes it may be better to divide more finely: what an installer installs MAY be modeled as several components.
A data model MAY identify a software component by parts of an ISO SWID tag.
Each copy of a piece of software is called a software instance. The configuration of a software instance is regarded as part of the software instance. Configuration can strongly affect security posture.
A data model MUST support the following relationships:
A data model MAY use ISO SWID tags to describe software instances.
Hardware components may also be assets and/or harmful. For example, a USB port on a system may be disabled to prevent information flow into our out of a particular system; this provides an additional layer of protection that can complement software based protections. Other such assets may include access to or modification of storage media, hardware key stores, microphones and cameras. Like software assets, we can consider these hardware components both from the perspective of (a) an asset that needs protection and (b) an asset that can be compromised in some way to do harm.
A data model MAY designate a hardware component by its manufacturer and a part number.
A hardware instance is just an instance of a particular component.
A data model MUST support the following relationships:
Hardware instances may need to be modeled because (a) an endpoint may have multiple instances of a hardware component, (b) a hardware instance may be compromised, whereas other instances may remain intact.
A data model MAY designate a hardware instance by its component and a unique serial number.
An endpoint generally has at least one network interface.
Interfaces nest. A virtual interface can nest in a physical interface.
A data model MUST support the following relationships:
TODO: DELETE THIS SECTION. ISSUE (CEK): Do we still want to model layer 4 addresses?
An address SHALL BE any of:
Addresses from other layers may be added in the future.
These addresses are not necessarily globally unique. Therefore, a data model SHOULD allow an address to be qualified with a scope.
A data model MUST support the following relationships:
TODO: delete this section
An identity is the non-secret part of a credential. Examples are a username, an X.500 distinguished name, and a public key. Passwords, private keys, and other secrets are not considered part of an identity.
A data model MUST support the following relationships:
TODO: Delete this section?
Location can be logical or physical. Location can be a clue to an endpoint's identity.
A data model MUST support the following relationships:
Examples of location:
CEK: The last three examples seem too advanced for the first set of SACM RFCs. I do not know a notation that would be interoperable and useful for endpoint identification. Should we drop them?
CEK: If we do drop them, all we have left is the device and port at which the endpoint is linked to the network. Maybe we should regard that as a kind of address.
A data model MUST support switch + port number, access point, and VPN gateway as locations. The other examples are optional.
More than one of kind of location may pertain to an endpoint. Endpoint has a many-to-many relationship with Location.
An endpoint is the hollow center of the model. An endpoint is an abstract ideal. Any endpoint attribute assertion that mentions an endpoint mentions it by specifying identifying attributes. Even if there is one preferred endpoint identity, that is modeled as an identity. We do not anticipate any AVP whose attribute type is "endpoint".
An endpoint attribute assertion has:
It means that over the specified time interval, there was an endpoint for which all of the listed attribute-value pairs were true.
If the "Endpoint uniquely identified" is true, the set of attributes-value pairs together make this assertion apply to only one endpoint.
The attributes can include posture attributes and identification attributes. The model does not make a rigid distinction between the two uses of attributes.
Some of the attributes may be multi-valued.
One of the AVPs may be a unique endpoint identifier. Not every endpoint will have one. If there is one, the SACM component that produces the Endpoint Attribute Assertion will not necessarily know what it is.
An Endpoint Attribute Assertion may come from an attribute collector or an evaluator. It may come from a SACM component that derives it from out-of-band sources, such as a physical inventory system. A SACM component may derive it from other Endpoint Attribute Assertions.
For example, an attribute assertion might have these attribute-value pairs:
This asserts that an endpoint with MAC address 01:23:45:67:89:ab ran OS X 10.6.8 throughout the specified time interval. A profiler might have provided this assertion.
For example, Endpoint Attribute Assertions should help SACM components to track an endpoint as it roams or stays stationary. They must track endpoints because they must track endpoints' postures over time. Tracking of an endpoint can employ many clues, such as:
An event is represented as a Posture Attribute Assertion whose time interval has length zero.
Some potential kinds of events are:
Author: Henk Birkholz
"Attribute" and "event" are often used fairly interchangeably. A clear distinction makes the words more useful.
An *attribute* tends not to change until something causes a change. In contrast, an *event* occurs at a moment in time.
For a nontechnical example, let us consider "openness" as an attribute of a door, with two values, "open" and "closed". A closed door tends to stay closed until something opens it (a breeze, a person, or a dog).
The door's opening or closing is an event.
Similarly, "Host firewall enabled" may be modeled as a true/false attribute of an endpoint. Enabling or disabling the host firewall may be modeled as an event. An endpoint's crashing also may be modeled as an event.
Although events are not attributes, we use one kind of information element, the "Endpoint Attribute Assertion", to describe both attributes and events.
The set of attribute types must be extensible, by other IETF standards, by other standards groups, and by vendors. How to express attribute types is not defined here, but is left to data models.
The value may be structured. For example, it may something like XML.
The information model requires a standard attribute type (or possibly more than one) for each box in Figure 1:
An organization should try to uniquely identify and label an endpoint, whether the endpoint is enrolled or is discovered in the operational environment. The identifier should be assigned by or used in the enrollment process.
Here "unique" means one-to-one. In practice, uniqueness is not always attainable. Even if an endpoint has a unique identifier, an attribute collector may not always know it.
If the attribute type of an AVP is "endpoint", the value is a unique identifier of the endpoint.
Some AVPs will be posture attributes.
See the definition in the SACM Terminology for Security Assessment [I-D.ietf-sacm-terminology].
Some potential kinds of posture attributes are:
Evaluation Results (see [I-D.ietf-sacm-terminology]) are modeled as Endpoint Attribute Assertions.
An Evaluation Result derives from one or more other Endpoint Attribute Assertions.
An example is: a NEA access recommendation [RFC5793]
An evaluator may be able to evaluate better if history is available. This is a use case for retaining Endpoint Attribute Assertions for a time.
An Evaluation Result may be retained longer than the Endpoint Attribute Assertions from which it derives. (Figure 1 does not show this.) In the limiting case, Endpoint Attribute Assertions are not retained. When as an Endpoint Attribute Assertion arrives, an evaluator produces an Evaluation Result. These mechanics are out of the scope of the Information Model.
ISSUE (CEK): Should we take modeling of reports out of scope? It is clear that reports are needed. But is a *standard* for reports needed, and does it deserve our priority?
An Endpoint Attribute Assertion concerns a single endpoint. Assertions about a set of endpoints are also needed -- for example, for trend analysis and for reports read by humans. These assertions are termed "reports". SACM components will consume Endpoint Attribute Assertions and generate reports.
A report contains its provenance, with the same form and meaning as the provenance of an Endpoint Attribute Assertion.
A Report summarizes:
A Report may routine or ad hoc.
Some reports may be machine readable. Machine readable reports may be consumable by SACM components and by automatic response systems (not specified by SACM).
Although SACM components are mainly covered by the SACM architecture, we have some remarks. TODO: Move them?
ISSUE (CEK): Why do we need information elements that model SACM compoments?
An external collector is a collector that observes endpoints from outside. [kkw-many of these [collectors] are actually configured and operated to manage assets for reasons other than posture assessments. it is critical to bring them into this, so i like it...but does it matter if the [collector] isn't intended to support posture assessment, but happens to have information that can be used by posture assessment collection consumers? do we lump them together with collectors that are intended to support posture assessment but run external to the endpoint?] [jmf: ditto. The exampled below are of things that would perform external collection].
[cek-to kkw's comment, I think the purpose here is to capture their contribution to continuous monitoring. I don't see the need to separate things whose primary job is monitoring from things whose primary job is something else. Is there a need?]
[cek-to jmf's comment, that is what they are examples of; is a text change needed?]
Examples:
An evaluator can consume endpoint attribute assertions, previous evaluations of posture attributes, or previous reports of evaluation results. [kkw-i don't think this conflicts with the definition in the terminology doc re: that evaluation tasks evaluate posture attributes.]
[cek-I like the change. I think it *does* require a change in the terminology doc, though.]
Example: a NEA posture validator [RFC5209]
[jmf- a NEA posture validator is not an example of this definition. A NEA posture assessment is, maybe?]
[cek-Why isn't a NEA posture validator an example?]
A report generator makes reports based on:
It may summarize data continually, as the data arrives. It also may summarize data in response to an ad hoc query.
[kkw-from a reporting standpoint there needs to be some concept like organization or system. without this, there is no way to produce result reports that can be acted upon to provide the insight or accountability that almost all continuous monitoring instances are trying to achieve. from a scoring or grading standpoint, an endpoint needs to be associated with exactly one organization or system. it can have a many to many relationship with other types of results reporting "bins". is this important to include here? we had organization as a core asset type for this reason, so i think it is a key information element. but i also know that i do not want to define all the different reporting types, so i am unsure.]
[cek-I had not thought of this at all. Would it make sense to treat the organization and the bins as part of the guidance for creating reports? Maybe not. We should discuss.]
[jmf- the guidance sections need more detail. . .]
[cek - What is missing? We would welcome a critique or text.]
Guidance is generally configurable by human administrators.
An internal collector may need guidance to govern what it collects and when.
An external collector may need guidance to govern what it collects and when.
An evaluator typically needs Evaluation Guidance to govern what it considers to be a good or bad security posture.
A SACM deployment may retain posture attributes, events, or evaluation results for some time. Retention supports ad hoc reporting and other use cases.
If information is retained, retention guidance controls what is retained and for how long.
If two or more pieces of retention guidance apply to a piece of information, the guidance calling for the longest retention should take precedence.
A Report Generator typically needs Reporting Guidance to govern the reports it generates.
Each Endpoint Attribute Assertion and Report needs to be labeled with its provenance.
See the definition in the SACM Terminology for Security Assessment [I-D.ietf-sacm-terminology].
In the model, an endpoint can be part of another endpoint. This covers cases where multiple physical endpoints act as one endpoint. The constituent endpoints may not be distinguishable by external observation of network behavior.
For example, a hosting center may maintain a redundant set (redundancy group) of multi-chassis setups to provide active redundancy and load distribution on network paths to WAN gateways. Multi-chassis link aggregation groups make the chassis appear as one endpoint. Traditional security controls must be applied either to physical endpoints or the redundancy groups they compose (and occasionally both). Loss of redundancy is difficult to detect or mitigate without specific posture information about the current state of redundancy groups. Even if a physical endpoint (e.g. router) that is part of a redundancy group is replaced, the redundancy group can remain the same.
An endpoint identity provides both identification and authentication of the endpoint. For example, an identity may be an X.509 certificate [RFC5280] and corresponding private key. [jmf- this example should be formatted like the other examples in this section]
Not all kinds of identities are guaranteed to be unique.
An endpoint contains and runs software components.
Some of the software components are assets. "Asset" is defined in RFC4949 [RFC4949] as "a system resource that is (a) required to be protected by an information system's security policy, (b) intended to be protected by a countermeasure, or (c) required for a system's mission."
An examination of software needs to consider both (a) software assets and (b) software that may do harm. A posture attribute collector may not know (a) from (b). It is useful to define Software Component as the union of (a) and (b).
Examples of Software Assets:
Examples of harmful software components:
Organizations need to be able to uniquely identify and label software installed or run on an endpoint. Specifically, they need to know the name, publisher, unique ID, and version; and any related patches. In some cases the software's identity might be known a priori by the organization; in other cases, a software identity might be first detected by an organization when the software is first inventoried in an operational environment. Due to this, it is important that an organization have a stable and consistent means to identify software found during collection.
A piece of software may have a unique identifier, such as a SWID tag (ISO/IEC 19770).
An endpoint is often - but not always - associated with one or more users.
A user's identity provides both identification and authentication of the user. @@@ Eh?
TODO: this section needs to refer out to wherever the operations / generalized workflow content ends up
TODO: revise to eliminate graph references
This section illustrates the proposed SACM Information Model as applied to SACM Usage Scenario 2.2.3, Detection of Posture Deviations [I-D.ietf-sacm-use-cases]. The following subsections describe the elements (components and elements), graph model, and operations (sample workflow) required to support the Detection of Posture Deviations scenario.
The Detection of Posture Deviations scenario involves multiple elements interacting to accomplish the goals of the scenario. Figure 1 illustrates those elements along with their major communication paths.
The following subsections contain examples of identifiers and metadata which would enable detection of posture deviation. These lists are by no means exhaustive - many other types of metadata would be enumerated in a data model that fully addressed this usage scenario.
The proposed SACM Information Model contains three components, as defined in the SACM Architecture [I-D.ietf-sacm-architecture]: Posture Attribute Information Provider, Posture Attribute Information Consumer, and Control Plane.
In this example, the components are instantiated as follows:
To represent the elements listed above, the set of identifiers might include (but is not limited to):
To characterize the elements listed above, the set of metadata types might include (but is not limited to):
Interaction between multiple sets of identifiers and metadata lead to some fairly common patterns, or "constellations", of metadata. For example, an authenticated-session metadata constellation might include a central network session with authorizations and location attached, and links to a user identity, an endpoint identity, a MAC address, an IP address, and the identity of the policy server that authorized the session, for the duration of the network session.
These constellations may be independent of each other, or one constellation may be connected to another. For example, an authenticated-session metadata constellation may be created when a user connects an endpoint to the network; separately, an endpoint- posture metadata constellation may be created when an endpoint security system and other collectors gather and publish posture information related to an endpoint. These two constellations are not necessarily connected to each other, but may be joined if the component publishing the authenticated-session metadata constellation is able to link the network session identifier to the identity identifier of the endpoint.
The workflow for exchange of information supporting detection of posture deviation, using a standard publish/subscribe/query transport model such as available with IF-MAP [TNC-IF-MAP-SOAP-Binding] or XMPP-Grid [I-D.salowey-sacm-xmpp-grid], is as follows:
Other components, such as access control policy servers or remediation systems, may also consume the posture deviation information provided by the endpoint security service.
Many of the specifications in this document have been developed in a public-private partnership with vendors and end-users. The hard work of the SCAP community is appreciated in advancing these efforts to their current level of adoption.
Over the course of developing the initial draft, Brant Cheikes, Matt Hansbury, Daniel Haynes, Scott Pope, Charles Schmidt, and Steve Venema have contributed text to many sections of this document.
The RFC guidelines no longer allow RFCs to be published with a large number of authors. Some additional authors contributed to specific sections of this document; their names are listed in the individual section headings as well as alphabetically listed with their affiliations below.
| Name | Affiliation | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Henk Birkholz | Fraunhofer SIT | henk.birkholz@sit.fraunhofer.de |
This memo includes no request to IANA.
Posture Assessments need to be performed in a safe and secure manner. In that regard, there are multiple aspects of security that apply to the communications between components as well as the capabilities themselves. Due to time constraints, this information model only contains an initial listing of items that need to be considered with respect to security. This list is not exhaustive, and will need to be augmented as the model continues to be developed/refined.
Initial list of security considerations include:
The TNC IF-MAP Binding for SOAP [TNC-IF-MAP-SOAP-Binding] and TNC IF-MAP Metadata for Network Security [TNC-IF-MAP-NETSEC-METADATA] document security considerations for sharing information via security automation. Most, and possibly all, of these considerations also apply to information shared via this proposed information model.
| [RFC0791] | Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, September 1981. |
| [RFC2119] | Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. |
| [RFC3587] | Hinden, R., Deering, S. and E. Nordmark, "IPv6 Global Unicast Address Format", RFC 3587, August 2003. |
| [RFC5280] | Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S., Housley, R. and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008. |
Trusted Network Connect (TNC) is a vendor-neutral open architecture [TNC-Architecture] and a set of open standards for network security developed by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). TNC standards integrate security components across end user systems, servers, and network infrastructure devices into an intelligent, responsive, coordinated defense. TNC standards have been widely adopted by vendors and customers; the TNC endpoint assessment protocols [TNC-IF-M-TLV-Binding][TNC-IF-TNCCS-TLV-Binding][TNC-IF-T-Tunneled-EAP][TNC-IF-T-TLS] were used as the base for the IETF NEA RFCs [RFC5792][RFC5793][RFC7171][RFC6876].
Traditional information security architectures have separate silos for endpoint security, network security, server security, physical security, etc. The TNC architecture enables the integration and categorization of security telemetry sources via the information model contained in its Interface for Metadata Access Points (IF-MAP) [TNC-IF-MAP-SOAP-Binding]. IF-MAP provides a query-able repository of security telemetry that may be used for storage or retrieval of such data by multiple types of security systems and endpoints on a vendor-neutral basis. The information model underlying the IF-MAP repository covers, directly or indirectly, all of the security information types required to serve SACM use-cases.
IF-MAP provides a standard client-server protocol for MAP clients to exchange security-relevant information via database server known as the Metadata Access Point or MAP. The data (known as "metadata") stored in the MAP is XML data. Each piece of metadata is tagged with a metadata type that indicates the meaning of the metadata and identifies an XML schema for it. Due to the XML language, the set of metadata types is easily extensible.
The MAP is a graph database, not a relational database. Metadata can be associated with an identifier (e.g. the email address "user@example.com") or with a link between two identifiers (e.g. the link between MAC address 00:11:22:33:44:55 and IPv4 address 192.0.2.1) where the link defines an association (for example: a relation or state) between the identifiers. These links between pairs of identifiers create an ad hoc graph of relationships between identifiers. The emergent structure of this graph reflects a continuously evolving knowledge base of security-related metadata that is shared between various providers and consumers.
The TNC Information Model underlying IF-MAP relies on the graph database architecture to enable a (potentially distributed) MAP service to act as a shared clearinghouse for information that infrastructure devices can act upon. The IF-MAP operations and metadata schema specifications (TNC IF-MAP Binding for SOAP [TNC-IF-MAP-SOAP-Binding], TNC IF-MAP Metadata for Network Security [TNC-IF-MAP-NETSEC-METADATA], and TNC IF-MAP Metadata for ICS Security [TNC-IF-MAP-ICS-METADATA]) define an extensible set of identifiers and data types.
Each IF-MAP client may interact with the IF-MAP graph data store through three fundamental types of operation requests:
The reader is invited to review the existing IF-MAP specification [TNC-IF-MAP-SOAP-Binding] for more details on the above graph data store operation requests and their associated arguments.
The current IF-MAP specification provides a SOAP [W3C.REC-soap12-part1-20070427] binding for the above operations, as well as associated SOAP operations for managing sessions, error handling, etc.
This section describes terms that have been defined by other RFCs and Internet Drafts, as well as new terms introduced in this document.
This section contains pre-defined terms that are sourced from other IETF RFCs and Internet Drafts. Descriptions of terms in this section will reference the original source of the term and will provide additional specific context for the use of each term in SACM. For sake of brevity, terms from [I-D.ietf-sacm-terminology] are not repeated here unless the original meaning has been changed in this document.
The posture of an endpoint is the status of the endpoint with respect to the security policies and risk models of the organization.
A system administrator needs to be able to determine which elements of an endpoint have a security problem and which do not conform the organization's security policies. The CIO needs to be able to determine whether endpoints have security postures that conform to the organization's policies to ensure that the organization is complying with its fiduciary and regulatory responsibilities. The regulator or auditor needs to be able to assess the level of due diligence being achieved by an organization to ensure that all regulations and due diligence expectations are being met. The operator needs to understand which assets have deviated from organizational policies so that those assets can be remedied.
Operators will focus on which endpoints are composed of specific assets with problems. CIO and auditors need a characterization of how an organization is performing as a whole to manage the posture of its endpoints. All of these actors need deployed capabilities that implement security automation standards in the form of data formats, interfaces, and protocols to be able to assess, in a timely and secure fashion, all assets on all endpoints within their enterprise. This information model provides a basis to identify the desirable characteristics of data models to support these scenarios. Other SACM specifications, such as the SACM Architecture, will describe the potential components of an interoperable system solution based on the SACM information model to address the requirements for scalability, timeliness, and security.
This information model is built on the following core principles:
This information model will focus on WHAT information needs to be exchanged to support the business process areas. The architecture document is the best place to represent the HOW and the WHERE this information is used. In an effort to ensure that the data models derived from this information model scale to the architecture, four core architectural components need to be defined. They are producers, consumers, capabilities, and repositories. These elements are defined as follows:
Information that needs to be communicated by or made available to any of these components will be specified in each of the business process areas.
In the most trivial example, illustrated in Figure 4, Consumers either request information from, or are notified by, Producers.
+----------+ Request +----------+
| <-----------------+ |
| Producer | | Consumer |
| +-----------------> |
+----------+ Response +----------+
+----------+ +----------+
| | Notify | |
| Producer +-----------------> Consumer |
| | | |
+----------+ +----------+
Figure 4: Example Producer/Consumer Interactions
As illustrated in Figure 5, writing and querying from data repositories are a way in which this interaction can occur in an asynchronous fashion.
+----------+ +----------+
| | | |
| Producer | | Consumer |
| | | |
+-----+----+ +----^-----+
| |
Write | +------------+ | Query
| | | |
+-----> Repository +-------+
| |
+------------+
Figure 5: Producer/Consumer Repository Interaction
To perform an assessment, these elements are chained together. The diagram below is illustrative of this and process, and is meant to demonstrate WHAT basic information exchanges need to occur, while trying to maintain flexibility in HOW and WHERE they occur.
For example:
+-------------+
|Evaluation |
+-------------+ |Guidance +--+
|Endpoint | |Capability | |
+-------+ | +-------------+ |
| | | |
| +-------+-----+ +-----v-------+
| Collection | |Evaluation |
+-> Capability +--+--------+ |Capability |
| | |Collection | +-----------+ +----------+
| +------------+Producer | | |---| |
| | | |Collection | |Evaluation|
| | | |Consumer | |Producer |
| +----+------+ +----^------+ +---+------+
++---------+ | | |
|Collection| +-----v------+ +---+--------+ |
|Guidance | | | |Collection | |
|Capability| |Collection | |Producer | |
| | |Consumer |-----| | |
+----------+ +------------+ +------------+ |
| Collection | |
| Repository | |
+------------+ |
|
+--------------+ +---------------+ |
|Evaluation | |Evaluation | |
|Results | |Consumer <-----+
|Producer |-----------| |
+-----+--------+ +---------------+
| |Results Reporting|
| |Capability |
| +------------^----+
| |
+-----v--------+ +----+------+
|Evaluation | |Reporting |
|Results | |Guidance |
|Consumer | |Repository |
+---+----------+ +-----------+ +-------------+
| | Results |
+-----------------------------> Repository |
| |
+-------------+
Figure 6: Producer/Consumer Complex Example
This illustrative example in Figure 6 provides a set of information exchanges that need to occur to perform a posture assessment. The rest of this information model is using this set of exchanges based on these core architectural components as the basis for determining information elements.
Scalable and sustainable collection, expression, and evaluation of endpoint information is foundational to SACM's objectives. To secure and defend one's network one must reliably determine what devices are on the network, how those devices are configured from a hardware perspective, what software products are installed on those devices, and how those products are configured. We need to be able to determine, share, and use this information in a secure, timely, consistent, and automated manner to perform endpoint posture assessments.
The goal of this iteration of the information model is to define the information needs for an organization to effectively monitor the endpoints operating on their network, the software installed on those endpoints, and the configuration of that software. Once we have those three business processes in place, we can identify vulnerable endpoints in a very efficient manner.
The four business process areas represent a large set of tasks that support endpoint posture assessment. In an effort to address the most basic and foundational needs, we have also narrowed down the scope inside of each of the business processes to a set of defined tasks that strive to achieve specific results in the operational environment and the organization. These tasks are:
Operations that may be carried out the proposed SACM Information Model are:
The subscribe capability will allow SACM components to monitor for selected security-related changes in the graph data store without incurring the performance penalties associated with polling for such changes.
The proposed SACM Information Model would be most commonly used with a suitable transport protocol for collecting and distributing security data across appropriate network platforms and endpoints. The information model is transport agnostic and can be used with its native transport provided by IF-MAP or by other data transport protocols such as the recently proposed XMPP-Grid.
Any component sharing information - either as Provider or Consumer - may do so on a one-to-one, one-to-many and/or many-to-many meshed basis.
The previous sections highlighted information needs for a set of management process areas that use posture assessment to achieve organizational security goals. A single information need may be made up of multiple information elements. Some information elements may be required for two different process areas, resulting in two different requirements. In an effort to support the main idea of collect once and reuse the data to support multiple processes, we try to define a singular set of information elements that will support all the associated information needs.
TODO: Kim to pull up relevant content into section 4 / Elements
Traditionally, one would use the SACM architecture to define interfaces that required information exchanges. Identified information elements would then be based on those exchanges. Because the SACM architecture document is still in the personal draft stage, this information model uses a different approach to the identification of information elements. First it lists the four main endpoint posture assessment activities. Then it identifies management process areas that use endpoint posture assessment to achieve organizational security objectives. These process areas were then broken down into operations that mirrored the typical workflow from the SACM Use Cases draft [I-D.ietf-sacm-use-cases]. These operations identify architectural components and their information needs. In this section, information elements derived from those information needs are mapped back to the four main activities listed above.
The original liaison statement [IM-LIAISON-STATEMENT-NIST] requested contributions for the SACM information model in the four areas described below. Based on the capabilities defined previously in this document, the requested areas alone do not provide a sufficient enough categorization of the necessary information model elements. The following sub-sections directly address the requested areas as follows:
Additionally, Appendix E.3.2 Other Identifiers: describes other important identification concepts that were not directly requested by the liaison statement.
Per the liaison statement, each subsection references related work that provides a basis for potential data models. Some analysis is also included for each area of related work on how directly applicable the work is to the SACM efforts. In general, much of the related work does not fully address the general or use case-based requirements for SACM, but they do contain some parts that can be used as the basis for data models that correspond to the information model elements. In these cases additional work will be required by the WG to adapt the specification. In some cases, existing work can largely be used in an unmodified fashion. This is also indicated in the analysis. Due to time constraints, the work in this section is very biased to previous work supported by the authors and does not reflect a comprehensive listing. An attempt has been made where possible to reference existing IETF work. Additional research and discussion is needed to include other related work in standards and technology communities that could and should be listed here. The authors intend to continue this work in subsequent revisions of this draft.
Where possible when selecting and developing data models in support of these information model elements, extension points and IANA registries SHOULD be used to provide for extensibility which will allow for future data models to be addressed.
In this context an "asset" refers to "anything that has value to an organization" (see [NISTIR-7693]). This use of the term "asset" is broader than the current definition in [I-D.ietf-sacm-terminology]. To support SACM use cases, a number of different asset types will need to be addressed. For each type of asset, one or more type of asset identifier will be needed for use in establishing contextual relationships within the SACM information model. The following asset types are referenced or implied by the SACM use cases:
The Asset Identification specification [NISTIR-7693] is an XML-based data model that "provides the necessary constructs to uniquely identify assets based on known identifiers and/or known information about the assets." Asset identification plays an important role in an organization's ability to quickly correlate different sets of information about assets. The Asset Identification specification provides the necessary constructs to uniquely identify assets based on known identifiers and/or known information about the assets. Asset Identification provides a relatively flat and extensible model for capturing the identifying information about a one or more assets, and also provides a way to represent relationships between assets.
The model is organized using an inheritance hierarchy of specialized asset types/classes (see Figure 7), providing for extension at any level of abstraction. For a given asset type, a number of properties are defined that provide for capturing identifying characteristics and the referencing of namespace qualified asset identifiers, called "synthetic IDs."
The following figure illustrates the class hierarchy defined by the Asset Identification specification.
asset
+-it-asset
| +-circuit
| +-computing-device
| +-database
| +-network
| +-service
| +-software
| +-system
| +-website
+-data
+-organization
+-person
Figure 7: Asset Identification Class Hierarchy
This table presents a mapping of notional SACM asset types to those asset types provided by the Asset Identification specification.
| SACM Asset Type | Asset Identification Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Endpoint | computing-device | This is not a direct mapping since a computing device is not required to have network-connectivity. Extension will be needed to define a directly aligned endpoint asset type. |
| Hardware | Not Applicable | The concept of hardware is not addressed by the asset identification specification. An extension can be created based on the it-asset class to address this concept. |
| Software | software | Direct mapping. |
| Network | network | Direct mapping. |
| Organization | organization | Direct mapping. |
| Person | person | Direct mapping. |
This specification has been adopted by a number of SCAP validated products. It can be used to address asset identification and categorization needs within SACM with minor modification.
An unique name for an endpoint. This is a foundational piece of information that will enable collected posture attributes to be related to the endpoint from which they were collected. It is important that this name either be created from, provide, or be associated with operational information (e.g., MAC address, hardware certificate) that is discoverable from the endpoint or its communications on the network. It is also important to have a method of endpoint identification that can persist across network sessions to allow for correlation of collected data over time.
The previously introduced asset identification specification (see Appendix E.3.1.1.1 provides a basis for endpoint identification using the "computing-device" class. While the meaning of this class is broader than the current definition of an endpoint in the SACM terminology [I-D.ietf-sacm-terminology], either that class or an appropriate sub-class extension can be used to capture identification information for various endpoint types.
A unique name for a unit of installable software. Software names should generally represent a unique release or installable version of software. Identification approaches should allow for identification of commercially available, open source, and organizationally developed custom software. As new software releases are created, a new software identifier should be created by the releasing party (e.g., software creator, publisher, licensor). Such an identifier is useful to:
In general, an extensible method of software identification is needed to provide for adequate coverage and to address legacy identification approaches. Use of an IANA registry supporting multiple software identification methods would be an ideal way forward.
While we are not aware of a one-size-fits-all solution for software identification, there are two existing specifications that should be considered as part of the solution set. They are described in the following subsections.
The Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) [CPE-WEBSITE] is composed of a family of four specification that are layered to build on lower-level functionality. The following describes each specification:
The primary use case of CPE is for exchanging software inventory data, as it allows the usage of unique names to identify software platforms and products present on an endpoint. The NIST currently maintains and updates a dictionary of all agreed upon CPE names, and is responsible for ongoing maintenance of the standard. Many of the names in the CPE dictionary have been provided by vendors and other 3rd-parties.
While the effort has seen wide adoption, most notably within the US Government, a number of critical flaws have been identified. The most critical issues associated with the effort are:
The Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) Naming specification version 2.3 defines a scheme for human-readable standardized identifiers of hardware and software products.
CPE names are the identifier format for software and hardware products used in SCAP 1.2 and is currently adopted by a number of SCAP product vendors.
CPE names can be directly referenced in the asset identification software class (see Appendix E.3.1.1.1.)
Although relevant, CPE has an unsustainable maintenance "tail" due to the need for centralized curation and naming-consistency enforcement. Its mention in this document is to support the historic inclusion of CPE as part of SCAP and implementation of this specification in a number of security processes and products. Going forward, software identification (SWID) tags are recommended as a replacement for CPE. To this end, work has been started to align both efforts to provide translation for software units identified using SWID tags to CPE Names. This translation would allow tools that currently use CPE-based identifiers to map to SWID identifiers during a transition period.
The software identification tag specification [ISO.19770-2] is an XML-based data model that is used to describe a unit of installable software. A SWID tag contains data elements that:
SWID tags can be associated with software installation media, installed software, software updates (e.g., service packs, patches, hotfixes), and redistributable components. SWID tags also provide for a mechanism to relate these concepts to each other. For example, installed software can be related back to the original installation media, patches can be related to the software that they patch, and software dependencies can be described for required redistributable components. SWID tags are ideally created at build-time by the software creator, publisher or licensor; are bundled with software installers; and are deployed to an endpoint during software installation.
SWID tags should be considered for two primary uses:
In addition to usage for software identification, a SWID tag can provide the necessary data needed to target guidance based on included metadata, and to support verification of installed software and software media using cryptographic hashes. This added information increases the value of using SWID tags as part of the larger security automation and continuous monitoring solution space.
Due to the time constraints, research into information elements and related work for identifying hardware is not included in this revision of the information model.
In addition to identifying core asset types, it is also necessary to have stable, globally unique identifiers to represent other core concepts pertaining to posture attribute collection and evaluation. The concept of "global uniqueness" ensures that identifiers provided by multiple organization do not collide. This may be handled by a number of different mechanisms (e.g., use of namespaces).
A name for a low-level, platform-dependent configuration mechanism as determined by the authoritative primary source vendor. New identifiers will be created when the source vendor makes changes to the underlying platform capabilities (e.g., adding new settings, replacing old settings with new settings). When created each identifier should remain consistent with regards to what it represents. Generally, a change in meaning would constitute the creation of a new identifier.
For example, if the configuration item is for "automatic execution of code", then the platform vendor would name the low-level mechanism for their platform (e.g., autorun for mounted media).
The Common Configuration Enumeration (CCE) [CCE] is an effort managed by NIST. CCE provides a unique identifier for platform-specific configuration items that facilitates fast and accurate correlation of configuration items across multiple information sources and tools. CCE does this by providing an identifier, a human readable description of the configuration control, parameters needed to implement the configuration control, various technical mechanisms that can be used to implement the configuration control, and references to documentation that describe the configuration control in more detail.
By vendor request, NIST issues new blocks of CCE identifiers. Vendors then populate the required fields and provided the details back to NIST for publication in the "CCE List", a consolidated listing of assigned CCE identifiers and associated data. Many vendors also include references to these identifiers in web pages, SCAP content, and prose configuration guides they produce.
CCE the identifier format for platform specific configuration items in SCAP and is currently adopted by a number of SCAP product vendors.
While CCE is largely supported as a crowd-sourced effort, it does rely on a central point of coordination for assignment of new CCE identifiers. This approach to assignment requires a single organization, currently NIST, to manage allocations of CCE identifiers which doesn't scale well and introduces sustainability challenges for large volumes of identifier assignment. If this approach is used going forward by SACM, a namespaced approach is recommended for identifier assignment that allows vendors to manage their own namespace of CCE identifiers. This change would require additional work to specify and implement.
The Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL®) is an XML schema-based data model developed as part of a public-private information security community effort to standardize how to assess and report upon the security posture of endpoints. OVAL provides an established framework for making assertions about an endpoint's posture by standardizing the three main steps of the assessment process:
OVAL facilitates collaboration and information sharing among the information security community and interoperability among tools. OVAL is used internationally and has been implemented by a number of operating system and security tools vendors.
The following figure illustrates the OVAL data model.
+------------+
+-----------------+ | Variables |
| Common <---+ |
+--------> | +------------+
| | | +------------+
| | <---+ Directives |
| +--------^----^---+ | |
| | | +--------+---+
| | +-----+ |
| | | |
| +--------+--------+ | |
| | System | | |
| | Characteristics | | |
+------+------+ | | | +--------v---+
| Definitions | | | | | Results |
| | +--------^--------+ +-+ |
| | | | |
| | +------------+ |
+------^------+ +-------+----+
| |
+--------------------------------------+
Note: The direction of the arrows indicate a model dependency
Figure 8: The OVAL Data Model
The OVAL data model [OVAL-LANGUAGE], visualized in Figure 8, is composed of a number of different components. The components are:
End-user organizations and vendors create assessment guidance using OVAL by creating XML instances based on the XML schema implementation of the OVAL Definitions model. The OVAL Definitions model defines a structured identifier format for each of the Definition, Test, Object, State, and Item elements. Each instantiation of these elements in OVAL XML instances are assigned a unique identifier based on the specific elements identifier syntax. These XML instances are used by tools that support OVAL to drive collection and evaluation of endpoint posture. When posture collection is performed, an OVAL Systems Characteristics XML instance is generated based on the collected posture attributes. When this collected posture is evaluated, an OVAL Result XML instance is generated that contains the results of the evaluation. In most implementations, the collection and evaluation is performed at the same time.
Many of the elements in the OVAL model (i.e., Test, Object, State, Item) are abstract, requiring a platform-specific schema implementation, called a "Component Model" in OVAL. These platform schema implementations are where platform specific posture attributes are defined. For each aspect of platform posture a specialized OVAL Object, which appears in the OVAL Definitions model, provides a format for expressing what posture attribute data to collect from an endpoint through the specification of a datatype, operation, and value(s) on entities that uniquely identify a platform configuration item. For example, a hive, key, and name is used to identify a registry key on a Windows endpoint. Each specialized OVAL Object has a corresponding specialized State, which represents the posture attributes that can be evaluated, and an Item which represents the specific posture attributes that can be collected. Additionally, a specialized Test exists that allows collected Items corresponding to a CollectedObject to be evaluated against one or more specialized States of the same posture type.
The OVAL language provides a generalized approach suitable for posture collection and evaluation. While this approach does provide for a degree of extensibility, there are some concerns that should be addressed in order to make OVAL a viable basis for SACM's use. These concerns include:
If adopted by SCAM, these issues will need to be addressed as part of the SCAM engineering work to make OVAL more broadly adoptable as a general purpose data model for posture collection and evaluation.
Each OVAL Object is identified by a globally unique identifier. This globally unique identifier could be used by the SACM community to identify platform-specific configuration items and at the same time serve as collection guidance. If used in this manner, OVAL Objects would likely need to undergo changes in order to decouple it from evaluation guidance and to provide more robust collection capabilities to support the needs of the SACM community.
An identifier for a high-level, platform-independent configuration control. This identification concept is necessary to allow similar configuration item concepts to be comparable across platforms. For example, a configuration item might be created for the minimum password length configuration control, which may then have a number of different platform-specific configuration settings. Without this type of identification, it will be difficult to perform evaluation of expected versus actual state in a platform-neutral way.
High-level configuration items tend to change much less frequently than the platform-specific configuration items (see Appendix E.3.2.1) that might be associated with them. To provide for the greatest amount of sustainability, collections of configuration item identifiers are best defined by specific communities of interest, while platform-specific identifiers are best defined by the source vendor of the platform. Under this model, the primary source vendors would map their platform-specific configuration controls to the appropriate platform-independent item allowing end-user organizations to make use of these relationships.
To support different communities of interest, it may be necessary to support multiple methods for identification of configuration items and for associating related metadata. Use of an IANA registry supporting multiple configuration item identification methods would be an ideal way forward. To the extent possible, a few number of configuration item identification approaches is desirable, to maximize the update by vendors who would be maintain mapping of platform-specific configuration identifiers to the more general platform-neutral configuration identifiers.
The Control Correlation Identifier (CCI) [CCI] is developed and managed by the United States Department of Defense (US-DoD) Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). According to their website, CCI "provides a standard identifier and description for each of the singular, actionable statements that comprise an information assurance (IA) control or IA best practice. CCI bridges the gap between high-level policy expressions and low-level technical implementations. CCI allows a security requirement that is expressed in a high-level policy framework to be decomposed and explicitly associated with the low-level security setting(s) that must be assessed to determine compliance with the objectives of that specific security control. This ability to trace security requirements from their origin (e.g., regulations, IA frameworks) to their low-level implementation allows organizations to readily demonstrate compliance to multiple IA compliance frameworks. CCI also provides a means to objectively roll-up and compare related compliance assessment results across disparate technologies."
It is recommended that this approach be analysed as a potential candidate for use as a configuration item identifier method.
Note: This reference to CCI is for informational purposes. Since the editors do not represent DISA's interests, its inclusion in this document does not indicate the presence or lack of desire to contribute aspects of this effort to SACM.
There will likely be a desire by different communities to create different collections of configuration item identifiers. This fracturing may be caused by:
Due to these and other potential needs, it will be difficult to standardize around a single collection of configuration identifiers. A workable solution will be one that is scalable and usable for a broad population of end-user organizations. An alternate approach that should be considered is the definition of data model that contains a common set of metadata attributes, perhaps supported by an extensible taxonomy, that can be assigned to platform-specific configuration items. If defined at a necessary level of granularity, it may be possible to query collections of platform-specific configuration items provided by vendors to create groupings at various levels of abstractions. By utilizing data provided by vendors, technological needs and the timeliness of information can be addressed based on customer requirements.
SACM should consider this and other approaches to satisfy the need for configuration item roll-up in a way that provides the broadest benefit, while achieving a sensible degree of scalability and sustainability.
An unique name for a known software flaw that exists in specific versions of one or more units of software. One use of a vulnerability identifier in the SACM context is to associate a given flaw with the vulnerable software using software identifiers. For this reason at minimum, software identifiers should identify a software product to the patch or version level, and not just to the level that the product is licensed.
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) [CVE-WEBSITE] is a MITRE led effort to assign common identifiers to publicly known security vulnerabilities in software to facilitate the sharing of information related to the vulnerabilities. CVE is the industry standard by which software vendors, tools, and security professionals identify vulnerabilities and could be used to address SACM's need for a vulnerability identifier.
Target when policies (collection, evaluated, guidance) apply
Collection can be used to further characterize
Also human input
Information required to characterize an endpoint is used to determine what endpoints are the target of a posture assessment. It is also used to determine the collection, evaluation, and/or reporting policies and the associated guidance that apply to the assessment. Endpoint characterization information may be populated by:
Regardless of the method of collection, it will be necessary to query and exchange endpoint characterization information as part of the assessment planning workflow.
The Extensible Configuration Checklist Description Format (XCCDF) is a specification that provides an XML-based format for expressing security checklists. The XCCDF 1.2 specification is published by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) [ISO.18180]. XCCDF contains multiple components and capabilities, and various components align with different elements of this information model.
This specification was originally published by NIST [NISTIR-7275]. When contributed to ISO Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1), a comment was introduced indicating an interest in the IETF becoming the maintenance organization for this standard. If the SACM working group is interested in taking on engineering work pertaining to XCCDF, a contribution through a national body can be made to create a ballot resolution for transition of this standard to the IETF for maintenance.
The target component of XCCDF provides a mechanism for capturing characteristics about an endpoint including the fully qualified domain name, network address, references to external identification information (e.g. Asset Identification), and is extensible to support other useful information (e.g. MAC address, globally unique identifier, certificate, etc.). XCCDF may serve as a good starting point for understanding the types of information that should be used to identify an endpoint.
The Asset Reporting Format (ARF) [NISTIR-7694] is a data model to express information about assets, and the relationships between assets and reports. It facilitates the reporting, correlating, and fusing of asset information within and between organizations. ARF is vendor and technology neutral, flexible, and suited for a wide variety of reporting applications.
There are four major sub-components of ARF:
For Endpoint Characterization, ARF can be used in multiple ways due to its flexibility. ARF supports the use of the Asset Identification specification (more in Appendix E.3.3.1.2.3) to embed the representation of one or more assets as well as relationships between those assets. It also allows the inclusion of report-requests, which can provide details on what data was required for an assessment.
ARF is agnostic to the data formats of the collected posture attributes and therefore can be used within the SACM Architecture to provide Endpoint Characterization without dictating data formats for the encoding of posture attributes. The embedded Asset Identification data model (see Appendix E.3.1.1.1) can be used to characterize one or more endpoints to allow targeting for collection, evaluation, etc. Additionally, the report-request model can dictate the type of reporting that has been requested, thereby providing context as to which endpoints the guidance applies.
Described earlier
In the context of Endpoint Characterization, the Asset Identification data model could be used to encode information that identifies specific endpoints and/or classes of endpoints to which a particular assessment is relevant. The flexibility in the Asset Identification specification allows usage of various endpoint identifiers as defined by the SACM engineering work.
As stated in Appendix E.3.3.1.2.3, the Asset Identification specification is included within the Asset Reporting Framework (ARF) and therefore can be used in concert with that specification as well.
CPE described earlier
Applicability in CPE is defined as an XML language [NISTIR-7698] for using CPE names to create applicability statements using logical expressions. These expressions can be used to applicability statements that can drive decisions about assets, whether or not to do things like collect data, report data, and execute policy compliance checks.
It is recommended that SACM evolve the CPE Applicability Language through engineering work to allow it to better fit into the security automation vision laid out by the Use Cases and Architecture for SACM. This should include de-coupling the identification part of the language from the logical expressions, making it such that the language is agnostic to the method by which assets are identified. This will allow use of SWID, CPE Names, or other identifiers to be used, perhaps supported by an IANA registry of identifier types.
The other key aspect that should be evolved is the ability to make use of the Applicability Language against a centralized repository of collected posture attributes. The language should be able to make applicability statements against previously collected posture attributes, such that an enterprise can quickly query the correct set of applicable endpoints in an automated and scalable manner.
Discuss the catalog concept. Listing of things that can be chosen from. Things we can know about. Vendors define catalogs. Ways for users to get vendor-provided catalogs.
To support the collection of posture attributes, there needs to be a way for operators to identify and select from a set of platform-specific attribute(s) to collect. The same identified attributes will also need to be identified post-collection to associate the actual value of that attribute pertaining to an endpoint as it was configured at the time of the collection. To provide for extensibility, the need exists to support a variety of possible identification approaches. It is also necessary to enable vendors of software to provide a listing, or catalog, of the available posture attributes to operators that can be collected. Ideally, a federated approach will be used to allow organizations to identify the location for a repository containing catalogs of posture attributes provided by authoritative primary source vendors. By querying these repositories, operators will be able to acquire the appropriate listings of available posture attributes for their deployed assets. One or more posture attribute expressions are needed to support these exchanges.
The ATOM Syndication Format [RFC4287] provides an extensible, flexible XML-based expression for organizing a collection of data feeds consisting of entries. This standard can be used to express one or more catalogs of posture attributes represented as data feeds. Groupings of posture attributes would be represented as entries. These entries could be defined using the data models described in the "Related Work" sections below. Additionally, this approach can also be used more generally for guidance repositories allowing other forms of security automation guidance to be exchanged using the same format.
A low-level, platform-dependent posture attribute as determined by the authoritative primary source vendor. Collection guidance will be derived from catalogs of platform specific posture attributes.
For example, a primary source vendor would create a platform-specific posture attribute that best models the posture attribute data for their platform.
A general overview of OVAL was provided previously in Appendix E.3.2.1.1.2.1. The OVAL System Characteristics platform extension models provide a catalog of the posture attributes that can be collected from an endpoint. In OVAL these posture attributes are further grouped into logical constructs called OVAL Items. For example, the passwordpolicy_item that is part of the Windows platform extension groups together all the posture attributes related to passwords for an endpoint running Windows (e.g. maximum password age, minimum password length, password complexity, etc.). The various OVAL Items defined in the OVAL System Characteristics may serve as a good starting for the types of posture attribute data that needs to be collected from endpoints.
OVAL platform extension models may be shared using the ATOM Syndication Format.
The Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) [RFC6241] defines a mechanism for managing and retrieving posture attribute data from network infrastructure endpoints. The posture attribute data that can be collected from a network infrastructure endpoint is highly extensible and can defined using the YANG modeling language [RFC6020]. Models exist for common datatypes, interfaces, and routing subsystem information among other subjects. The YANG modeling language may be useful in providing an extensible framework for the SACM community to define one or more catalogs of posture attribute data that can be collected from network infrastructure endpoints.
Custom YANG modules may also be shared using the ATOM Syndication Format.
The Simple Network Protocol (SNMP) [RFC3411] defines a protocol for managing and retrieving posture attribute data from endpoints on a network . The posture attribute data that can be collected of an endpoint and retrieved by SNMP is defined by the Management Information Base (MIB) [RFC3418] which is hierarchical collection of information that is referenced using Object Identifiers . Given this, MIBs may provide an extensible way for the SACM community to define a catalog of posture attribute data that can be collected off of endpoints using SNMP.
MIBs may be shared using the ATOM Syndication Format.
Discuss instance concept.
The actual value of a posture attribute is collected or published from an endpoint. The identifiers discussed previously provide names for the posture attributes (i.e., software or configuration item) that can be the subject of an assessment. The information items listed below are the actual values collected during the assessment and are all associated with a specific endpoint.
A software inventory is a list of software identifiers (or content) associated with a specific endpoint. Software inventories are maintained in some organized fashion so that entities can interact with it. Just having software publish identifiers onto an endpoint is not enough, there needs to be an organized listing of all those identifiers associated with that endpoint.
The Asset Summary Reporting (ASR) specification [NISTIR-7848] provides a format for capturing summary information about one or more assets. Specifically, it provides the ability to express a collection of records from some defined data source and map them to some set of assets. As a result, this specification may be useful for capturing the software installed on an endpoint, its relevant attributes, and associating it with a particular endpoint.
SWID tag were previously introduced in Appendix E.3.1.3.1.2. As stated before, SWID tags are ideally deployed to an endpoint during software installation. In the less ideal case, they may also be generated based on information retrieved from a proprietary software installation data store. At minimum, SWID tag must contain an identifier for each unit of installed software. Given this, SWID tags may be a viable way for SACM to express detailed information about the software installed on an endpoint.
Configurations associated with a software instance associated with an endpoint
A list of the configuration posture attributes associated with the actual values collected from the endpoint during the assessment as required/expressed by any related guidance. Additionally, each configuration posture attribute is associated with the installed software instance it pertains to.
A general overview of OVAL was provided previously in Appendix E.3.2.1.1.2.1. As mentioned earlier, the OVAL System Characteristics platform extensions provide a catalog of the posture attributes that can be collected and assessed in the form of OVAL Items. These OVAL Items also serve as a model for representing posture attribute data and associated values that are collected off an endpoint. Furthermore, the OVAL System Characteristics model provides a system_info construct that captures information that identifies and characterizes the endpoint from which the posture attribute data was collected. Specifically, it includes operating system name, operating system version, endpoint architecture, hostname, network interfaces, and an extensible construct to support arbitrary additional information that may be useful in identifying the endpoint in an enterprise such as information capture in Asset Identification constructs. The OVAL System Characteristics model could serve as a useful starting point for representing posture attribute data collected from an endpoint although it may need to undergo some changes to satisfy the needs of the SACM community.
Introduced earlier in Appendix E.3.4.2.1.2, NETCONF defines a protocol for managing and retrieving posture attribute data from network infrastructure endpoints. NETCONF provides the <get-config> and <get> operations to retrieve the configuration data, and configuration data and state data respectively from a network infrastructure endpoint. Upon successful completion of these operations, the current posture attribute data of the network infrastructure endpoint will be made available. NETCONF also provides a variety of filtering mechanisms (XPath, subtree, content matching, etc.) to trim down the posture attribute data that is collected from the endpoint. Given that NETCONF is widely adopted by network infrastructure vendors, it may useful to consider this protocol as a standardized mechanism for collecting posture attribute data from network infrastructure endpoints.
As a side note, members of the OVAL Community have also developed a proposal to extend the OVAL Language to support the assessment of NETCONF configuration data <https://github.com/OVALProject/Sandbox/blob/master/x-netconf-definitions-schema.xsd>. The proposal leverages XPath to extract the posture attribute data of interest from the XML data returned by NETCONF. The collected posture attribute data can then be evaluated using OVAL Definitions and the results of the evaluation can be expressed as OVAL Results. While this proposal is not currently part of the OVAL Language, it may be worth considering.
The SNMP, previously introduced in Appendix E.3.4.2.1.3, defines a protocol for managing and retrieving posture attribute data from endpoints on a network [RFC3411]. SNMP provides three protocol operations [RFC3416] (GetRequest, GetNextRequest, and GetBulkRequest) for retrieving posture attribute data defined by MIB objects. Upon successful completion of these operations, the requested posture attribute data of the endpoint will be made available to the requesting application. Given that SNMP is widely adopted by vendors, and the MIBs that define posture attribute data on an endpoint are highly extensible, it may useful to consider this protocol as a standardized mechanism for collecting posture attribute data from endpoints in an enterprise.
The evaluation guidance is applied by evaluators during posture assessment of an endpoint. This guidance must be able to reference or be associated with the following previously defined information elements:
A general overview of OVAL was provided previously in Appendix E.3.2.1.1.2.1. The OVAL Definitions model provides an extensible framework for making assertions about the state of posture attribute data collected from an endpoint. Guidance written against this model consists of one or more OVAL Tests, which can be logically combined, where each OVAL Test defines what posture attributes should be collected from an endpoint (as OVAL Objects) and optionally defines the expected state of the posture attributes (as OVAL States). While the OVAL Definitions model may be a useful starting point for evaluation guidance, it will likely require some changes to decouple collection and evaluation concepts to satisfy the needs of the SACM community.
A general description of XCCDF was provided in Appendix E.3.3.1.1.1. As noted there, an XCCDF document represents a checklist of items against which a given endpoint's state is compared and evaluated. An XCCDF Rule represents one assessed item in this checklist. A Rule contains both a prose description of the assessed item (either for presentation to the user in a tool's user interface, or for rendering into a prose checklist for human consumption) and can also contain instructions to support automated evaluation of the assessed item, if such automated assessment is possible. Automated assessment instructions can be provided either within the XCCDF Rule itself, or by providing a reference to instructions expressed in other languages, such as OVAL.
In order to support greater flexibility in XCCDF, checklists can be tailored to meet certain needs. One way to do this is to enable or disable certain rules that are appropriate or inappropriate to a given endpoint, respectively. For example, a single XCCDF checklist might contain check items to evaluate the configuration of an endpoint's operating system. An endpoint deployed in an enterprise's DMZ might need to be locked down more than a common internal endpoint, due to the greater exposure to attack. In this case, some operating system configuration requirements for the DMZ endpoint might be unnecessary for the internal endpoint. Nonetheless, most configuration requirements would probably remain applicable to both environments (providing a common baseline for configuration of the given operating system) and thus be common to the checking instructions for both types of endpoints. XCCDF supports this by allowing a single checklist to be defined, but then tailored to the needs of the assessed endpoint. In the previous example, some Rules that apply only to the DMZ endpoint would be disabled during the assessment of an internal endpoint and would not be exercised during the assessment or count towards the assessment results. To accomplish this, XCCDF uses the CPE Applicability Language. By enhancing this applicability language to support other aspects of endpoint characterization (see Appendix E.3.3.1.3), XCCDF will also benefit from these enhancements.
In addition, XCCDF Rules also support parameterization, allowing customization of the expected value for a given check item. For example, the DMZ endpoint might require a password of at least 12 characters, while an internal endpoint may only need 8 or more characters in its password. By employing parameterization of the XCCDF Rule, the same Rule can be used when assessing either type of endpoint, and simply be provided with a different target parameter each time to reflect the different role-based requirements. Sets of customizations can be stored within the XCCDF document itself: XCCDF Values store parameters values that can be used in tailoring, while XCCDF Profiles store sets of tailoring instructions, including selection of certain Values as parameters and the enabling and disabling of certain Rules. The tailoring capabilities supported by XCCDF allow a single XCCDF document to encapsulate configuration evaluation guidance that applies to a broad range of endpoint roles.
The evaluation guidance applied during posture assessment of an endpoint to customize the behavior of evaluators. Guidance can be used to define specific result output formats or to select the level-of-detail for the generated results. This guidance must be able to reference or be associated with the following previously defined information elements:
A general description of the eXtensible Configuration Checklist Description Format (XCCDF) was provided in section Appendix E.3.3.1.1.1. The XCCDF TestResult structure captures the outcome of assessing a single endpoint against the assessed items (i.e., XCCDF Rules) contained in an XCCDF instance document. XCCDF TestResults capture a number of important pieces of information about the assessment including:
The individual results for a given XCCDF Rule capture only whether the rule "passed", "failed", or experienced some exceptional condition, such as if an error was encountered during assessment. XCCDF 1.2 Rule results do not capture the actual state of the endpoint. For example, an XCCDF Rule result might indicate that an endpoint failed to pass requirement that passwords be of a length greater than or equal to 8, but it would not capture that the endpoint was, in fact, only requiring passwords of 4 or more characters. It may, however, be possible for a user to discover this information via other means. For example, if the XCCDF Rule uses an OVAL Definition to effect the Rule's evaluation, then the actual endpoint state may be captured in the corresponding OVAL System Characteristics file.
The XCCDF TestResult structure does provide a useful structure for understanding the overall assessment that was conducted and the results thereof. The ability to quickly determine the Rules that are not complied with on a given endpoint allow administrators to quickly identify where remediation needs to occur.
A general overview of OVAL was provided previously in Appendix E.3.2.1.1.2.1. OVAL Results provides a model for expressing the results of the assessment of the actual state of the posture attribute values collected of an endpoint (represented as an OVAL System Characteristics document) against the expected posture attribute values (defined in an OVAL Definitions document. Using OVAL Directives, the granularity of OVAL Results can also be specified. The OVAL Results model may be useful in providing a format for capturing the results of an assessment.
A general overview of ASR was provided previously in Appendix E.3.5.1.1.1. As ASR provides a way to report summary information about assets, it can be used within the SACM Architecture to provide a way to aggregate asset information for later use. It makes no assertions about the data formats used by the assessment, but rather provides an XML, record-based way to collect aggregated information about assets.
By using ASR to collect this summary information within the SACM Architecture, one can provide a way to encode the details used by various reporting requirements, including user-definable reports.
A general overview of ARF was provided previously in Appendix E.3.3.1.2.1. Because ARF is data model agnostic, it can provide a flexible format for exchanging collection and evaluation information from endpoints. It additionally provides a way to encode relationships between guidance and assets, and as such, can be used to associate assessment results with guidance. This could be the guidance that directly triggered the assessment, or for guidance that is run against collected posture attributes located in a central repository.
The results of an evaluation of an endpoint's software inventory against an authorized software list. The authorized software list represents the policy for what software units are allowed, prohibited, and mandatory for an endpoint.
TODO: Write text on how the information model above can be realized in this kind of graph model.
The graph model describes how security information is structured, related, and accessed. Control of operations to supply and/or access the data is architecturally distinct from the structuring of the data in the information model. Authorization may be applied by the Control Plane (as defined in the SACM Architecture [I-D.ietf-sacm-architecture]) to requests for information from a consumer or requests for publication from a provider, and may also be applied by a provider to a direct request from a consumer.
This architecture addresses information structure independently of the access/transport of that information. This separation enables scalability, customizability, and extensibility. Access to provide or consume information is particularly suited to publish/subscribe/query data transport and data access control models.
This graph model is a framework that:
Knowledge is often represented with graph-based formalisms. A common formalism defines a graph as follows:
+------------------+ +-----------------+
| Id: 1 | parent-of |Id: 2 |
| Given name: Sue | --------------> |Given name: Ann |
| Family name: Wong| |Family name: Wong|
+------------------+ +-----------------+
A VERTEX AN EDGE A VERTEX
Figure 9: Knowledge represented by a graph
A pair of vertices connected by an edge is commonly referred to as a triple that comprises subject, predicate and object. For example, subject = Sue Wong, predicate = is-parent-of, object = Ann Wong. A common language that uses this representation is the Resource Description Framework (RDF) [W3C.REC-rdf11-concepts-20140225].
The proposed model, influenced by IF-MAP, is a labeled graph: each vertex has a label.
A table of synonyms follows.
| Graph Theory | Graph Databases | IF-MAP and This Internet Draft |
|---|---|---|
| Vertex or Node | Node | - |
| Label | - | Identifier |
| Edge | Edge | Link |
| - | Property | Metadata Item |
In this mode, identifiers and metadata have hierarchical structure.
The graphical aspect makes this model well suited to non-hierarchical relationships, such as connectivity in a computer network.
Hierarchical properties allow this model to accommodate structures such as YANG [RFC6020] data models.
Each identifier is an XML element. For extensibility, schemas use xsd:anyAttribute and such.
Alternately, this model could be changed to use another hierarchical notation, such as JSON.
Identifiers are unique: two different vertices cannot have equivalent identifiers.
An identifier has a type. There is a finite, but extensible, set of identifier types. If the identifier is XML, the type is based on the XML schema.
In IF-MAP, standard identifier types include IP address, MAC address, identity, and overlay network. Additional identifier types will need to be standardized for SACM use cases.
Any number of metadata items can be attached to an identifier.
Some identifiers, especially those relating to identity, address, and location, require the ability to specify an administrative domain (such as AD domain, L2 broadcast domain / L3 routing domain, or geographic domain) in order to differentiate between instances with the same name occurring in different realms.
A link can be thought of as an ordered pair of identifiers.
Any number of metadata items can be attached to a link.
A metadata item is the basic unit of information, and is attached to an identifier or to a link.
A given metadata item is an XML document. In IF-MAP metadata items are generally small. However, larger ones, such as YANG data models, can also fit. For extensibility, the XML schemas of metadata items use xsd:anyAttribute and such.
Alternately, this model could be changed to use another hierarchical notation, such as JSON.
A metadata item has a type. There is a finite, but extensible, set of metadata types. If the metadata item is XML, the type is based on the XML schema. An example metadata type is http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/2010/IFMAP-METADATA/2#device- characteristic.
TNC IF-MAP Metadata for Network Security [TNC-IF-MAP-NETSEC-METADATA] and TNC IF-MAP Metadata for ICS Security [TNC-IF-MAP-ICS-METADATA] define many pertinent metadata types. More will need to be standardized for SACM use cases.
Many of the information elements can be represented as vertices, and many of the relationships can be represented as edges.
Identifiers are like database keys. For example, there would be identifiers for addresses, identities, unique endpoint identifiers, software component identifiers, and hardware component identifiers. The inventory of software instances and hardware instances within an endpoint might be expressed using a single YANG description, as a single metadata item in the graph. Where to put Endpoint Attribute Assertions, Evaluation Results, and the like is an open question.
Provenance helps to protect the SACM ecosystem against a misled or malicious provider.
The provenance of a metadata item includes:
How provenance should be expressed is an open question. For reference, in IF-MAP provenance of a metadata item is expressed within the metadata item [TNC-IF-MAP-NETSEC-METADATA]. For example, there is a top-level XML attribute called "timestamp".
It is critical that provenance be secure from tampering. How to achieve that security is out of scope of this document.
Anyone can define an identifier type or a metadata type, by creating an XML schema (or other specification). There is no need for a central authority. Some deployments may exercise administrative control over the permitted identifier types and metadata types; others may leave components free rein.
A community of components can agree on and use new identifier and metadata types, if the administrators allow it. This allows rapid innovation. Intermediate software that conveys graph changes from one component to another does not need changes. Components that do not understand the new types do not need changes. Accordingly, a consumer normally ignores metadata types and identifier types it does not understand.
As a proof point for this agility, the original use cases for TNC IF- MAP Binding for SOAP [TNC-IF-MAP-SOAP-Binding] were addressed in TNC IF-MAP Metadata for Network Security [TNC-IF-MAP-NETSEC-METADATA]. Some years later an additional, major set of use cases, TNC IF-MAP Metadata for ICS [TNC-IF-MAP-ICS-METADATA], were specified and implemented.