Re: [sacm] Draft updated charter for SACM

["Waltermire, David A. (Fed)" <[e-mail]>]

The charter should describe the work we are planning to do. The milestones should reflect the timing. Given that this group has suffered from a lack of agreement around what we are working on, I think it is prudent to be more concrete about our work items in the charter. I know of other WGs that do this when it serves their needs. I think we should keep and refine the work items text to get to a consensus position on what work needs to be done.

All of the work listed either is being worked on or has interested parties that are willing to do the work. This is another good reason to move forward with these work items.

Regards,
Dave


-------- Original Message --------
From: "Nancy Cam-Winget (ncamwing)" <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, September 21, 2017 8:42 PM -0400
To: Adam Montville <[e-mail]>, "Waltermire, David A. (Fed)" <[e-mail]>, "Banghart, Stephen A. (Fed)" <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [sacm] Draft updated charter for SACM

Hi Adam,
Thanks for that reminder….and yes, that was the gist of my comments.  That is, the charter is to define the intent of goals vs. calling out explicit drafts as those are best addressed in milestones….I am fine with the first proposed set of changes posted by Karen.  In general, I felt the additions are more suited for milestones.

                Nancy.

From: Adam Montville <[e-mail]>
Date: Thursday, September 21, 2017 at 3:17 PM
To: "Waltermire, David A. (Fed)" <[e-mail]>, "[e-mail]" <[e-mail]>, "Banghart, Stephen A. (Fed)" <[e-mail]>, "[e-mail]" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [sacm] Draft updated charter for SACM

Would any of the additions/questions be addressed if we adhered to Karen's initial reminder that "we plan to call out specific drafts using the milestone process and not include them in the base charter"?


On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 1:41 PM Waltermire, David A. (Fed) <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
Comments inline below.

Thanks,
Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sacm [mailto:[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>] On Behalf Of Nancy Cam-
> Winget (ncamwing)
> Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2017 2:07 PM
> To: Banghart, Stephen A. (Fed) <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>;
> [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>
> Subject: Re: [sacm] Draft updated charter for SACM
>
> Please see my comments below:
>
> On 9/18/17, 11:08 AM, "sacm on behalf of Banghart, Stephen A. (Fed)"
> <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]> on behalf of [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>     All,
>
>     After discussion with a few other SACM document authors this version of
> the new charter proposal was put together. The changes throughout are
> minimal; the primary change is several additions to the work items section
> that covers other work currently being done in the WG.
>
>     Does anyone have any thoughts/comments/concerns on this proposed
> draft update?
>
>     Thanks,
>     Stephen Banghart
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>     SACM Charter Proposal
>     2017-09-12
>
>     Securing information and the systems that store, process, and transmit
> that information is a challenging task for organizations of all sizes, and many
> security practitioners spend much of their time on manual processes.
> Standardized protocols and models aiding collection and evaluation of
> endpoint attributes enable automation, thus freeing practitioners to focus on
> high priority tasks .
>
>     At its core, posture assessment  consists of five basic steps, which the
> working group desires to fulfill  in an innovative, automated manner capable
> of avoiding ad hoc or scheduled assessments:
>
>     1. Describe target endpoints
>     2. Determine specific endpoint elements  to assess
>     3. Collect and make available specified elements' actual values
>     4. Compare actual element values to expected element values
>     5. Make results available
>
>     This working group will focus on collection, evaluation, and orchestration
> and communication, as described herein.
>
>     A. Collection. The WG will define a standardized way to provide two types
> of imperative guidance to collectors over varying collection mechanisms:
>
>     1) Which target endpoints to collect from, and
>     2) What to collect from these target endpoints.
>
>     When classified , a set of instructions (such as vulnerability description
> data, YANG filter expressions, Windows Management Instrumentation
> classes, etc.) can be brokered to the appropriate collectors using the control
> plane functions  defined by "C. Orchestration and Communication" (below).
> Detecting and classifying desired attributes beforehand may require
> orchestrating functions that go beyond the set of capabilities a collector can
> provide, and will inform the requirements and characteristics for "C.
> Orchestration and Communication". The working group recognizes that
> manual configuration of targets and corresponding collection profiles will not
> scale and does not seem to be a viable option.
>
>     B. Evaluation. The working group will standardize a criteria language
> enabling evaluation of actual endpoint posture information against desired
> endpoint posture information to produce a standardized result. This
> extensible language will support complex Boolean statements, comparison
> operators, logical flow statements, and functions for string manipulation.
> Additionally, the working group will seek to discover an approach that allows
> data from any posture collection mechanism to be generically evaluated.
>
>     C. Orchestration and Communication. The working group will define a set
> of control plane functions to enable the discovery and orchestration
> between devices that can provide the requisite information  sought by
> posture collectors, posture evaluators, data repositories, and other SACM
> architectural components.
>
>     Due to the breadth of this work, the working group will address enterprise
> use cases pertaining to the assessment of endpoint posture (using the
> definitions of Endpoint and Posture from RFC 5209). The working group will,
> whenever reasonable and possible, reuse existing work.
> [NCW] I think we need to incorporate https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-
> sacm-terminology as we need to have a well understood set of definitions
> beyond “endpoint” and “posture”

[daw: When you suggest incorporating sacm-terminology, are you suggesting to add it as a work item? I am in favor of adding terminology as a work item, but I am concerned with referencing unstable terminology in the charter. We don't want the meaning of the charter to change over time.]

>
>     Specific work items will include the following:
>
>     -  The WG will define a way to provide two types of imperative guidance to
> the correct SACM collectors: 1) Which target endpoints to collect from and 2)
> what to collect from these target endpoints. When classified, a set of
> instructions, such as vulnerability description data or YANG filter expressions,
> can be brokered to the appropriate collectors. Detecting and classifying
> beforehand might require orchestrating functions that go beyond the set of
> capabilities a SACM collector can provide.
>
>     -  The WG will describe a criteria language capable of being evaluated
> against endpoint posture information to produce a standardized result. The
> language will support complex Boolean statements, comparison operators,
> and functions for string manipulation; and will be extensible enough to be
> applicable to the full range of collected posture attributes. Additionally, this
> document will describe an approach that allows data from any posture
> collection mechanism to be evaluated.
>
>     - The WG will define a control plane function to enable the discovery and
> orchestration between devices that can provide the requisite information
> sought by posture collectors, posture evaluators or both. As an example, a
> document that describes an instance of such a control plane and transfer
> protocol for data, is through the use of XMPP and extensions as needed to
> demonstrate XMPP’s applicability to SACM.
>
>     - A method of expressing software metadata is needed that is suitable for
> use by constrained devices. The WG will create a standards track document
> that defines a CBOR-based format that represents software metadata to
> include software identification, file hashes, and other descriptive
> information. This format will be derived from the ISO/IEC 19770-2 Software
> Identification (SWID) tag standard.
> [NCW]  I am not sure why this is called out explicitly as software metadata
> could also be represented with the Yang model?  Perhaps the intent is to
> show this as one example for how it can be expressed?  That is, there are
> other representations that the IETF is looking at that could also be leveraged.

[daw: This work item description is for the draft-ietf-sacm-coswid work, which is SWID tag based. Doing this work is not mutually exclusive with work on YANG-based software models. I personally believe both should be worked on. By including this work item, I wanted to make sure we identified an existing portion of adopted SACM work as something we plan to complete under this revised charter. This does not exclude working on YANG models in SACM or elsewhere that relate to software.]

>
>     - To support collection of posture information from traditional computing
> devices (e.g., servers, laptops, etc.), the WG will create standards track
> documents describing mechanisms for the collection and delivery of
> information about installed software on an endpoint by extending IETF NEA.
>
>     - To provide for the integration of multiple standards to support posture
> information collection, the WG will define best practices  for the collection of
> posture information from endpoints and its delivery to a collector, from
> which it can be distributed using the SACM messaging standards.
> [NCW] This seems to
>
>     -The WG will define standards track documents describing extensions to
> the Resource-Oriented Lightweight Information Exchange (ROLIE) that
> provide IANA registrations and requirements to support the sharing of
> software, configuration information, and other forms of imperative
> guidance.
> [NCW] Similar to my previous comment, about CBOR/SWID,  there can be
> other means for providing information exchange.  For example, using Yang
> model and leveraging NETCONFs work for the information exchange.

[daw: This work item addresses  draft-banghart-sacm-rolie-softwaredescriptor (which has been adopted) and
draft-mandm-sacm-rolie-configuration-checklist. The ROLIE-based software descriptor model supports vendor-to-enterprise exchange of CBOR/XML SWID information (a type of imperative guidance), which can be used to provide golden measurements, to construct vulnerability detection data, and other security automation/assessment related use cases. Configuration setting checklists expressed in a machine readable form are another example of imperative guidance that can be exchanged over ROLIE with the definition of a proper extension. This imperative guidance can be used to drive collection and evaluation by defining what needs to be gathered and what the expected state must be according to policy. ROLIE exchanges are different than the exchanges supported by NETCONF and SWIMA, which are focused on endpoint-to-enterprise exchanges of current state. Both the vendor-to-enterprise and the endpoint-to-enterprise exchanges are needed in my view, since they support different aspects of the assessment workflow.]

>
>     Additionally, the working group will describe: 1) a SACM Architecture
> including protocol requirements and their associated use cases as well as a
> description of how SACM protocols fit together into a system, and 2) a SACM
> Information Model.
>
>
>     > -----Original Message-----
>     > From: sacm [mailto:[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>] On Behalf Of Karen
>     > O'Donoghue
>     > Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2017 12:48 PM
>     > To: [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>
>     > Subject: [sacm] Draft updated charter for SACM
>     >
>     > Folks,
>     >
>     > Below is a draft update to our charter based on discussion at the last IETF
> and
>     > some subsequent private discussions. Comments welcome. Please
>     > remember that we plan to call out specific drafts using the milestone
> process
>     > and not include them in the base charter.
>     >
>     > Regards,
>     > Karen
>     >
>     > ***************
>     >
>     > SACM Charter Proposal
>     > 2017-09-12
>     >
>     > Securing information and the systems that store, process, and transmit
> that
>     > information is a challenging task for organizations of all sizes, and many
>     > security practitioners spend much of their time on manual processes.
>     > Standardized protocols and models aiding collection and evaluation of
>     > endpoint attributes enable automation, thus freeing practitioners to
> focus on
>     > high priority tasks.
>     >
>     > At its core, posture assessment consists of five basic steps, which the
>     > working group desires to fulfill in an innovative, automated manner
> capable
>     > of avoiding ad hoc or scheduled assessments:
>     >
>     > 1. Describe target endpoints
>     > 2. Determine specific endpoint elements to assess 3. Collect and make
>     > available specified elements' actual values 4. Compare actual element
> values
>     > to expected element values 5. Make results available
>     >
>     > This working group will focus on collection, evaluation, and orchestration
> and
>     > communication, as described herein.
>     >
>     > A. Collection. The WG will define a standardized way to provide two
> types of
>     > imperative guidance to collectors over varying collection mechanisms:
>     >
>     > 1) Which target endpoints to collect from, and
>     > 2) What to collect from these target endpoints.
>     >
>     > When classified, a set of instructions (such as vulnerability description
> data,
>     > YANG filter expressions, Windows Management Instrumentation classes,
>     > etc.) can be brokered to the appropriate collectors using the control
> plane
>     > functions defined by "C. Orchestration and Communication" (below).
>     > Detecting and classifying desired attributes beforehand may require
>     > orchestrating functions that go beyond the set of capabilities a collector
> can
>     > provide, and will inform the requirements and characteristics for "C.
>     > Orchestration and Communication". The working group recognizes that
>     > manual configuration of targets and corresponding collection profiles will
> not
>     > scale and does not seem to be a viable option.
>     >
>     > B. Evaluation. The working group will standardize a criteria language
> enabling
>     > evaluation of actual endpoint posture information against desired
> endpoint
>     > posture information to produce a standardized result. This extensible
>     > language will support complex Boolean statements, comparison
> operators,
>     > logical flow statements, and functions for string manipulation.
> Additionally,
>     > the working group will seek to discover an approach that allows data from
>     > any posture collection mechanism to be generically evaluated.
>     >
>     > C. Orchestration and Communication. The working group will define a set
> of
>     > control plane functions to enable the discovery and orchestration
> between
>     > devices that can provide the requisite information sought by posture
>     > collectors, posture evaluators, data repositories, and other SACM
>     > architectural components.
>     >
>     > Due to the breadth of this work, the working group will address
> enterprise
>     > use cases pertaining to the assessment of endpoint posture (using the
>     > definitions of Endpoint and Posture from RFC 5209). The working group
> will,
>     > whenever reasonable and possible, reuse existing work.
>     >
>     > Specific work items will include the following:
>     >
>     > - Collection: The WG will define a way to provide two types of imperative
>     > guidance to the correct SACM collectors: 1) Which target endpoints to
> collect
>     > from and 2) what to collect from these target endpoints. When classified,
> a
>     > set of instructions, such as vulnerability description data or YANG filter
>     > expressions, can be brokered to the appropriate collectors. Detecting
> and
>     > classifying beforehand might require orchestrating functions that go
> beyond
>     > the set of capabilities a SACM collector can provide.
>     >
>     > - Evaluation: The working group will describe a criteria language capable
> of
>     > being evaluated against endpoint posture information to produce a
>     > standardized result. The language will support complex Boolean
> statements,
>     > comparison operators, and functions for string manipulation; and will be
>     > extensible enough to be applicable to the full range of collected posture
>     > attributes. Additionally, this document will describe an approach that
> allows
>     > data from any posture collection mechanism to be evaluated.
>     >
>     > - Messaging: The WG will define a control plane function to enable the
>     > discovery and orchestration between devices that can provide the
> requisite
>     > information sought by posture collectors, posture evaluators or both. As
> an
>     > example, a document that describes an instance of such a control plane
> and
>     > transfer protocol for data, is through the use of XMPP and extensions as
>     > needed to demonstrate XMPP’s applicability to SACM.
>     >
>     > Additionally, the working group will describe: 1) a SACM Architecture
>     > including protocol requirements and their associated use cases as well as
> a
>     > description of how SACM protocols fit together into a system, and 2) a
> SACM
>     > Information Model.
>     >
>     > _______________________________________________
>     > sacm mailing list
>     > [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>
>     > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/sacm
>     _______________________________________________
>     sacm mailing list
>     [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>
>     https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/sacm
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> sacm mailing list
> [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/sacm
_______________________________________________
sacm mailing list
[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/sacm