NIST, in conjunction with DHS, has developed an “enterprise continuous monitoring technical reference architecture that extends the framework provided by the DHS Federal Network Security CAESARS [Continuous Asset Evaluation, Situational Awareness and Risk Scoring] architecture.” The document’s goal “is to facilitate enterprise continuous monitoring by presenting a reference architecture that enables organizations to aggregate collected data from across a diverse set of security tools, analyze that data, perform scoring, enable user queries, and provide overall situational awareness.”
DHS developed their Continuous Asset Evaluation, Situational Awareness and Risk Scoring (CAESARS) Reference Architecture Report in response to an OMB memo directing DHS, State, Treasury and Justice “to evaluate their continuous monitoring (CM) best practices and scale them across the government.”
“In October 2010, the Federal Chief Information Officer Council’s Information Security and Identity Management Committee’s (ISIMC) subcommittee on CM saw the need to create a technical initiative to expand upon the CAESARS architecture. Responding to this need, a team of researchers from the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Information Assurance Directorate, the DHS Federal Network Security CAESARS team, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory worked together.”
The draft document “describes the resulting CAESARS Framework Extension (FE), building upon the CAESARS architecture to make it more broadly applicable to the entire U.S. government including the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and civilian agencies.”
Of particular note, the document “was also designed to be applicable to industry, state governments, and tribal networks through using a flexible architecture able to handle diverse customers and uses.”
Comments on the draft document, NIST IR-7756, are due by March 11, 2011. Comments should be submitted to fe-comments@nist.gov
NIST Interagency Report 7756 (Draft) is attached below.
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