Subject: WG Action: Network Endpoint Assessment (nea)

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:50:01 -0500

A new IETF working group has been formed in the Security Area.  
For additional information, please contact the Area Directors 
or the WG Chairs.

+++

Network Endpoint Assessment (nea)
===================================

Current Status: Active Working Group

Chair(s): 
Steve Hanna <[email-masked]>
Susan Thomson <[email-masked]>

Security Area Director(s):
Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>

Security Area Advisor:
Russ Housley <[email-masked]>

Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: [email-masked]
Subscription: http://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/nea 
Archive: http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/nea/current/index.html 

Description of Working Group:

Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA) architectures have been implemented
in the industry to assess the "posture" of endpoint devices for the
purposes of monitoring compliance to an organization's posture policy
and optionally restricting access until the endpoint has been updated
to satisfy the posture requirements. An endpoint that does not comply
with posture policy may be vulnerable to a number of known threats that
may exist on the network. The intent of NEA is to facilitate corrective
actions to address these known vulnerabilities before a host is exposed
to potential attack. Note that an endpoint that is deemed compliant may
still be vulnerable to threats that may exist on the network. The
network may thus continue to be exposed to such threats as well as the
range of other threats not addressed by maintaining endpoint
compliance.

Posture refers to the hardware or software configuration of an endpoint
as it pertains to an organization's security policy. Posture may
include knowledge that software installed to protect the machine (e.g.
patch management software, anti-virus software, host firewall software,
host intrusion protection software or any custom software) is enabled
and up-to-date. An endpoint supporting NEA protocols can be queried for
posture information.

An organization may make a range of policy decisions based on the
posture of an endpoint. NEA is not intended to be prescriptive in this
regard. Supported deployment scenarios will include, but are not
limited to, providing normal access regardless of compliance result
along with any recommendations for remediation ("advisory mode"), as
well as providing restricted access sufficient for remediation purposes
and any essential services until an endpoint is in compliance
("mandatory mode"). Specifying mechanisms for providing restricted
access is outside the scope of the NEA WG.

Since NEA involves many different components from different vendors,
interoperability is important. The priority of the NEA working group is
to develop standard protocols at the higher layers in the architecture:
the Posture Attribute protocol (PA) and the Posture Broker protocol
(PB). PA and PB will be designed to support a variety of lower layer
protocols. When used with standards for lower layers, the PA and PB
protocols will allow interoperability between an NEA Client from one
vendor and an NEA Server from another.

Since there are already several non-standard protocols at these higher
layers, the NEA working group will consider these existing protocols as
candidates for the standard protocols. A requirements document will be
written and used as a basis for evaluating the candidate protocols. The
working group may decide to standardize one of the candidate protocols,
use one of them as a basis for a new or revised protocol, or decide
that a new protocol is needed.

The NEA Requirements document will include a problem statement,
definition of terms, requirements for the PA and PB protocols, and an
overall security analysis. It will also include generic requirements
for the protocol transporting PA, PB: the Posture Transport protocol
(PT). PT protocols may be standardized in other WGs since these
protocols may not be specific to NEA. The NEA WG will identify and
specify the use of one mandatory to implement PT protocol that is fully
documented in an RFC.

The PA (Posture Attribute) protocol consists of posture attributes that
are carried between a particular Posture Collector in a NEA client and
a particular Posture Validator in a NEA Server. The PA protocol is
carried inside the PB protocol. A base set of standard posture
attributes will be specified that are expected to address many common
posture policies. Vendor-specific attributes will also be supported;
vendor-specific attributes will be identified by a private enterprise
number and a vendor assigned value. Vendors are strongly encouraged to
document vendor-specific attributes in an RFC. The NEA WG will
investigate the use of a standard syntax for all attributes.

The PB (Posture Broker) protocol aggregates posture attributes from one
or more Posture Collectors in an NEA client and sends them to the NEA
server for assessment by one or more Posture Validators.

The PT (Posture Transport) protocol carries the PB protocol.

The NEA working group will not specify protocols other than PA and PB
at this time. The expectation is that an existing protocol can be used
for the PT.

One commonly discussed issue with NEA systems is how to handle
compromised endpoints, whose reports of their own posture may not be
accurate. Detecting or handling such endpoints is out of scope of the
NEA WG. Work on PA will focus on attributes useful for assessing
posture of those endpoints reporting accurate information. However, the
protocols developed by the NEA WG must be designed to accommodate
emerging technologies for identifying and dealing with lying endpoints.

Note that NEA is not chartered to develop standard protocols for
remediation. NEA is intended to be used with new or existing tools that
can be used in the absence of NEA. NEA is applicable to computing
enterprise environments, where endpoints accessing the enterprise's
network are owned and/or expected to conform to the policies set forth
by the organization that owns and operates the network. All other
cases are outside the scope of the NEA charter, since we do not know
that NEA would be useful in such cases. NEA applicability and security
considerations will be described in the appropriate NEA documents.

Further work in the NEA WG will be considered via the rechartering
process after the completion of these milestones.

Milestones:

November 2006:
* At IETF 67, discuss issues with NEA Requirements I-D
* Submit first draft of NEA Requirements I-D
* Agree on solutions to issues with NEA Requirements I-D

December 2007:
* Submit revised requirements I-D

February 2007:
* WGLC on NEA Requirements I-D

March 2007:
* At IETF 68, resolve any open issues with requirements I-D

April 2007:
* Submit NEA Requirements I-D to the IESG for IETF Last Call
and publication as an Informational RFC

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