Network Endpoint Assessment (nea)
---------------------------------

 Charter
 Last Modified: 2009-09-29

 Current Status: Active Working Group

 Chair(s):
     Stephen Hanna  <shanna@juniper.net>
     Susan Thomson  <sethomso@cisco.com>

 Security Area Director(s):
     Tim Polk  <tim.polk@nist.gov>
     Pasi Eronen  <pasi.eronen@nokia.com>

 Security Area Advisor:
     Tim Polk  <tim.polk@nist.gov>

 Mailing Lists: 
     General Discussion:nea@ietf.org
     To Subscribe:      http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/nea
     Archive:           http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/nea

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 NEA working group will
 develop standard protocols at the following three  layers in the
architecture:
 the Posture Attribute protocol (PA),  the Posture Broker protocol
 (PB), and the Posture Transport protocol (PT). PA and PB will be
designed to
 support a variety of PT protocols. Together,  PA, PB and the mandatory to
 implement PT 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
 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).

 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
expectation
 is that the PT protocol is a shim protocol that defines an
encapsulation of PB
 within an existing standard transport protocol. Existing standard transport
 protocols will be leveraged to the extent possible. The NEA WG may specify
 more than one PT to meet the requirements of different deployment
scenarios.
 The NEA WG will specify at least one mandatory to implement PT protocol.
 PT protocol specifications must describe any limitations
 that they impose on PB and PA (e.g. half duplex).

 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.

 Goals and Milestones:

   Done         At IETF 67, discuss issues with NEA Requirements I-D 

   Done         Submit first draft of NEA Requirements I-D 

   Done         At IETF 68, resolve any open issues with requirements I-D 

   Done         Submit revised NEA requirements I-D 

   Done         Discuss NEA Requirements I-D 

   Done         Submit revised NEA requirements I-D 

   Done         WGLC on NEA requirements I-D 

   Done         At IETF 69, resolve any remaining issues raised at Last Call 

   Done         Submit revised NEA requirements I-D 

   Done         Submit NEA Requirements I-D to the IESG for IETF Last Call as 
                Informational RFC 

   Done         Submit revised NEA requirements I-D 

   Done         Proposals for PA and PB due 

   Done         Review and resolve proposals at IETF 71 

   Done         Post first WG version of PA and PB 

   Done         Post second version of PA and PB 

   Done         Resolve issues at IETF 72 

   Done         Post third version of PA and PB 

   Done         WGLC on PA and PB 

   Done         Resolve WGLC comments at IETF 73 

   Done         Post fourth version of PA and PB 

   Done         IETF LC for PA and PB 

   Done         IESG considers PA and PB for Proposed Standard 

   Sep 2009       Call for proposals for the PT protocol(s) 

   Oct 2009       Proposals due 

   Nov 2009       Review PT protocol proposals at IETF 76 Decide how to resolve 
                differences and issues 

   Dec 2009       Post first WG version of PT protocol(s) 

   Jan 2010       Review and resolve issues 

   Feb 2010       Post second WG version of PT protocol(s) 

   Mar 2010       WG Last Call on PT protocol(s) Resolve issues from WG Last Call 
                at IETF 77 

   Apr 2010       Post third WG version of PT protocol(s) 

   May 2010       Submit PT protocol(s) to IESG 


 Internet-Drafts:

Posted Revised         I-D Title   <Filename>
------ ------- --------------------------------------------
Apr 2008 Sep 2009   <draft-ietf-nea-pb-tnc-05.txt>
                PB-TNC: A Posture Broker Protocol (PB) Compatible with TNC 

Apr 2008 Oct 2009   <draft-ietf-nea-pa-tnc-06.txt>
                PA-TNC: A Posture Attribute Protocol (PA) Compatible with TNC 

 Request For Comments:

  RFC   Stat Published     Title
------- -- ----------- ------------------------------------
RFC5209 I    Jun 2008    Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA): Overview and 
                       Requirements