ARF, OVAL, OCIL or XCCDF?

About this interactive

SCAP is a NIST suite of specifications, written in XML, that lets scanners and other tools share the same information. The SCAP lesson covers its identification schemes (CPE, CCE, CVE), its scores (CVSS, CCSS) and four languages. This set is about the languages. ARF, the Asset Reporting Format: a standard way for tools to report about assets to each other, for example a sensor passing what it found to an asset database or a risk tool. OVAL, the Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language: automated checks. Each definition names a test, the object it looks at (a setting, a file, a package) and the state it expects, and the scanner queries the machine to compare. OCIL, the Open Checklist Interactive Language: questions for people, for checks that cannot be automated, such as whether a server is locked behind a door or the battery backup has been tested. XCCDF, the Extensible Configuration Checklist Description Format: the checklists themselves. It groups systems into profiles, says which rules each profile has to meet, and points to the OVAL or OCIL checks that test them. The lesson compares it to the policy. A quick test for each card: is it reporting about assets, checking a machine automatically, asking a person, or saying which rules apply to which systems?

What you'll learn

Name the SCAP language that does a job: ARF reports on assets, OVAL runs automated checks, OCIL asks people manual checklist questions, XCCDF holds the checklists and profiles that say which rules apply
Tell OVAL's automated query of a machine from OCIL's manual check that no scan can make

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

4.4 Explain security alerting and monitoring concepts and tools.

CompTIA CySA+

2.1 Given a scenario, implement vulnerability scanning methods and concepts.

NIST 800-53

RA-5 Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning

Key terms

Security Content Automation Protocol: Security Content Automation Protocol is a NIST standard that provides a standardized approach for expressing and automating security configurations, vulnerability assessment, and compliance checking using a suite of interoperable specifications.
Open Checklist Interactive Language: An XML-based language within SCAP used to define manual checklist-style assessments for security compliance items that cannot be automated.
Extensible Configuration Checklist Description Format: XCCDF is an XML-based specification language for writing security configuration checklists and benchmarks that can be automatically processed by compliance scanning tools.
Asset Reporting Format: An XML-based language within SCAP used to communicate and report information about assets across systems and tools on a network.

Topics

Vulnerability Management Scap Interactive Categorize

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