Security Content Automation Protocol(SCAP)
This article Provide of what is SCAP and how it's helps the enterprise to detect and manage the various vulnerability and SCAP tools.
What Is SCAP ?
Many of us has basic double " What method or specifications that standardize the format used in vulnerability Management ?
The Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) is a method for using specific standards to enable automated vulnerability management, measurement, and policy compliance evaluation of systems deployed in an organization, including e.g., FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act, 2002) compliance. The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is the U.S. government content repository for SCAP.
The Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), pronounced "ess-cap",but most commonly as "skap" comprises a number of open standards that are widely used to enumerate software flaws and configuration issues related to security.
SCAP is a checklist that enterprises follow to improve their cybersecurity posture. It helps automate and streamline processes such as known vulnerability analysis, security configuration verification, and report generation .SCAP is a multi-purpose protocol that supports automated configuration, vulnerability, and patch checking, technical control compliance activities, and security measurement. Goals for the development of SCAP include standardizing system security management, promoting interoperability of security products, and fostering the use of standard expressions of security content.
SCAP Specifications
Specifications that supports automated configuration, vulnerability and patch checking, technical control compliance activities, and security measurement.
Asset Identification
Asset identification plays an important role in an organization's ability to quickly correlate different sets of information about assets. This specification provides the necessary constructs to uniquely identify assets based on known identifiers and/or known information about the assets. This specification describes the purpose of asset identification, a data model for identifying assets, methods for identifying assets, and guidance on how to use asset identification. It also identifies a number of known use cases for asset identification.
Asset Reporting Format (ARF)
The Asset Reporting Format (ARF) is a data model to express the transport format of information about assets, and the relationships between assets and reports. The standardized data model facilitates the reporting, correlating, and fusing of asset information throughout and between organizations. ARF is vendor and technology neutral, flexible, and suited for a wide variety of reporting applications.
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)
CVE is a catalog of public information on security vulnerabilities. This SCAP component supports the exchange of information between security platforms.
Additionally, CVE provides a baseline index point for evaluating coverage offered by various security tools. CVE Format used help to standardize different and it's tracking unique "CVE-YYYY-XXXX" Y --->is the year of vulnerability published X --->Unique Number for the vulnerability. Example : Log4j CVE is CVE-2021-44228
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)
CVSS is an open framework used to transmit information about the characteristics of IT vulnerabilities. The quantitative model used by CVSS ensures accurate and repeatable measurement and displays the vulnerability characteristics used for score generation.
This SCAP specification is a standard measurement system for organizations, agencies, and industries needing consistent and accurate vulnerability impact scoring. CVSS ranged from 0 to 10 .CVSS also help to prioritize the vulnerability.
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Common Configuration Enumeration (CCE)
CCE serves as a unique identifier for specific configuration settings or security risks within a system. It is helpful for the standardized identification, remediation, and assessment of potential vulnerabilities.
CCE consists of a unique alphanumeric identifier, a brief summary of the vulnerability or configuration, metadata such as severity level, affected technology or platform, and remediation steps. The key benefit of CCE is the consistent and standardized transmission of security information across platforms and tools.
Example: CCE-82057-1 (Firefox browser "Enable Shared System Certificates")
Common Platform Enumeration (CPE)
Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) is a standardized method of describing and identifying classes of applications, operating systems, and hardware devices present among an enterprise's computing assets. CPE does not identify unique instantiations of products on systems, such as the installation of XYZ Visualizer Enterprise Suite 4.2.3 with serial number Q472B987P113. Rather, CPE identifies abstract classes of products, such as XYZ Visualizer Enterprise Suite 4.2.3, XYZ Visualizer Enterprise Suite (all versions), or XYZ Visualizer (all variations).
IT management tools can collect information about installed products, identifying these products using their CPE names, and then use this standardized information to help make fully or partially automated decisions regarding the assets. For example, identifying the presence of XYZ Visualizer Enterprise Suite could trigger a vulnerability management tool to check the system for known vulnerabilities in the software, and also trigger a configuration management tool to verify that the software is configured securely in accordance with the organization's policies. This example illustrates how CPE names can be used as a standardized source of information for enforcing and verifying IT management policies across tools.
Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL)
OVAL is a community-powered framework and language to specify low-level testing procedures that drive checklists. It is used to standardize assessment and reporting processes for the current state of a system.
OVAL definitions are written in XML and help report configurations, vulnerabilities, and the state of applied patches. Additionally, OVAL helps users gain critical insights into software inventory and compliance status.
This are the same of the Important specification for additional details refer the NIST site https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Security-Content-Automation-Protocol/
SCAP Based Tools:
Other reference:
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