NISTIR 5472

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                   A HEAD START ON ASSURANCE
                               
                       Proceedings of an
                     Invitational Workshop
                              on
                  Information Technology (IT)
                 Assurance and Trustworthiness
                               
                       March 21-23, 1994
                               
                     George Washington Inn
                    Williamsburg, Virginia
                               
                               
                               
                               
                               
                               
                               
                               
                               
                           Edited by
                      Marshall D. Abrams
                     The MITRE Corporation
                              and
                       Patricia R. Toth
        National Institute of Standards and Technology
                               
                               
                               
                               
                               
                         Sponsored by
            Aerospace Computer Security Associates
                               
                        Co-sponsored by
             National Computer Systems Laboratory,
        National Institute of Standards and Technology
                               
                               
                               
                               
                           ABSTRACT
                               
                               
The purpose of the Invitational Workshop on Information
Technology (IT) Assurance and Trustworthiness was to identify
crucial issues on assurance in IT systems and to provide input
into the development of policy guidance on determining the
type and level of assurance appropriate in a given
environment. The readers of these proceedings include those
who handle sensitive information involving national security,
privacy, commercial value, integrity, and availability.

Existing IT security policy guidance is based on computer and
communications architectures of the early 1980s. Technological
changes since that time mandate a review and revision of
policy guidance on assurance and trustworthiness, especially
since the changes encompass such technologies as distributed
systems, local area networks, the worldwide Internet, policy-
enforcing applications, and public key cryptography.


                           FOREWORD
                               
                               
The Aerospace Computer Security Associates (ACSA) had its
genesis in the first Aerospace Computer Security Applications
Conference in 1985. That conference was a success and evolved
into the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference
(ACSAC), which is now in its tenth year. Several years ago,
"Aerospace" was dropped from the name to promote a wider range
of government and commercial applications. ACSA was
incorporated in 1987 as a small, non-profit association of
computer security professionals who have a common goal of
improving the understanding, theory, and practice of computer
security. ACSA continues to be the primary sponsor of the
annual conference.

In 1989, ACSA began the Distinguished Lecture Series at the
annual conference. Each year an outstanding computer security
professional is invited to present a lecture of current
topical interest to the security community. Past Distinguished
Lecture speakers have included Dorothy Denning and Willis
Ware. In 1991, ACSA began issuing a Best-Paper-by-a-Student
Award at the annual conference. This award is intended to
encourage active student participation in the annual
conference. The Distinguished Lecturer and the award winning
student author receive an honorarium and all expenses paid for
attending the conference.

ACSA continues to be committed to serving the security
community by finding additional approaches for encouraging and
facilitating dialogue and technical interchange. ACSA is
always interested in suggestions from interested professionals
and computer security professional organizations on
achievement of these goals. In early 1994, ACSA, responding to
a perceived growing need in the community, organized and
sponsored the Invitational Workshop on Information Technology
Assurance and Trustworthiness (IWITAT). The IWITAT is the
first in what ACSA hopes will be a successful series of
workshops on assurance, trustworthiness, and other topics of
critical interest to security professionals. These proceedings
document the activities of that workshop.

The Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) at the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) works with
governments,  industry, academia, and consortia to improve the
efficiency and delivery of government services.  CSL develops
standards, guidelines, and test methods; validates products
for conformance to standards; conducts research; and provides
techical  advice and assistance.  Many interactions are
accomplished working directly with industry through workshops,
research and development agreements, and other cooperative
arrangements.

The Computer Security Division of the CSL provides guidance
and technical assistance to government and industry in the
protection of unclassified automated information systems.  The
Computer Security Division develops, prototypes, tests and
implements computer security standards and procedures to
prtoect sensitive  information from unauthorized access or
modicification.  Areas of cooperation with industry include
risk management; open systems; LAN security; security
architectures; systems integration; and public and private key
cryptographic techniques as applied to electronic data
interchange (EDI), electronic funds transfer, and electronic
mail.
                            PREFACE
                               
                               
                  ABOUT THIS INTERNAL REPORT
                               
                               
This Internal Report contains many more questions than
answers, accurately reflecting the current state of knowledge
and practice. It is, however, a significant step toward
developing an agenda for future work in IT assurance and
trustworthiness.

The plenary and working sessions are each documented in a
separate section of this Internal Report. The reader is
assumed to be knowledgeable about information security and
familiar with the Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria
(TCSEC) (DOD, 1985) as well as more contemporary efforts, such
as the Canadian Criteria (Canadian System Security Center,
1993), the European Information Technology Security Evaluation
Criteria (ITSEC) (Commission of the European Communities,
1991), and the United States Federal Criteria (FC) for
Information Technology Security (National Institute of
Standards and Technology and National Security Agency, 1992).

For background reading, we suggest Computers at Risk [National
Research Council, 1991]. Also, publication of Redefining
Security (Joint Security Commission, 1994) shortly before the
workshop provided an authoritative source for many commonly
held opinions. Specifically the following chapters cite
directly relevant background to this Internal Report: Chapter
1, "Approaching the Next Century"; Chapter 8, "Information
System Security"; and Chapter 11, "A Security Architecture for
the Future."
                        ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
                               
                               
We wish to acknowledge the assistance of Heidi Bass of the
George Washington Inn for her support during the post-workshop
editing session. C. Dawn Gibson and Carol R. Oakes of The
MITRE Corporation helped transform independent contributions
into a coherent proceedings.
                               
                       TABLE OF CONTENTS
                               

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW                                        XVII

 INTRODUCTION                                            XVII
 WORKING SESSIONS                                       XVIII
   TRADEOFFS                                            XVIII
   PEDIGREE                                             XVIII
   SECURITY ARCHITECTURE AND APPLICATIONS                 XIX
   PROCESS                                                XIX
   METRICS AND TESTING                                     XX
   RISK MANAGEMENT                                         XX
 CLOSING                                                  XXI

INTRODUCTION                                                 1

 1.1 PURPOSE OF THIS WORKSHOP                               1
 1.2 PRELIMINARY LIST OF ISSUES                             2
 1.3 WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION                                  3
 1.4 TERMINOLOGY                                            4
 1.5 DOCUMENT ORGANIZATION                                  5

THE OPENING PLENARY                                          7


SECURITY ASSURANCE TRADEOFFS                                 9

 3.1 INTRODUCTION                                           9
 3.2 MAIN CONCEPTS DISCUSSED                               10
 3.3 WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE TCSEC EMPHASIS ON TCB ASSURANCE?11
 3.4 WHY IS SECURITY OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM TCB DIFFERENT
 FROM
         SECURITY OF AN APPLICATION?                       12
 3.5 IS IT POSSIBLE TO QUANTIFY ASSURANCE VERSUS
 VULNERABILITY
        TRADEOFFS?                                         13
 3.6 WHO SHOULD MAKE TRADEOFF DECISIONS?                   15
 3.7 CONCLUSIONS                                           15

PEDIGREE                                                    17

 4.1 INTRODUCTION                                          17
 4.2 ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH PEDIGREE                       18
   4.2.1 WHAT IS A PEDIGREE?                               18
   4.2.2 APPLICABILITY                                     19
   4.2.3 INDIVIDUAL PEDIGREE                               20
   4.2.4 ORGANIZATIONAL PEDIGREE                           20
   4.2.5 MEASUREMENTS                                      20
   4.2.6 ENFORCEMENT                                       21
   4.2.7 USEFULNESS                                        21
   4.2.8 AGGREGATION                                       22
 4.3 CONCLUSIONS                                           22
   4.3.1 TERMINOLOGY                                       22
   4.3.2 CATEGORIZING                                      23
   4.3.3 FORMAL VERSUS INFORMAL IMPLEMENTATIONS            23

SECURITY ARCHITECTURE AND APPLICATIONS                      25

 5.1 INTRODUCTION                                          25
 5.2 NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING             27
 5.3 IS UNDERSTANDING AND IMPLEMENTING SECURITY IN LARGER
        DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS LESS ACHIEVABLE?               28
   5.3.1 POLICY ISSUES                                     28
   5.3.2 ACCESS ISSUES                                     30
   5.3.3 SCALABILITY ISSUES                                30
 5.4 ARE WE FOCUSED TOO MUCH ON OPERATING SYSTEM SECURITY?
        DO WE NEED TRUSTED APPLICATIONS?                   31
   5.4.1 FOCUS ON THE OPERATING SYSTEM                     31
   5.4.2 TRUST IN APPLICATIONS                             32
 5.5 HOW CAN SECURITY ARCHITECTURES EASE ASSURANCE
 ARGUMENTS?                                                33
 5.6 CAN SOME SECURITY ARCHITECTURES ALLOW INTEGRATION OF
 NEW
        TECHNOLOGIES, SUPPORT MORE SECURE USE OF LEGACY
 SYSTEMS,
        AND PROMOTE ASSURANCE?                             33
   5.6.1 NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND LEGACY SYSTEMS               33
   5.6.2 ADMINISTRATION OF DISTRIBUTED SECURITY            34
 5.7 CAN DIFFERENT SECURITY ARCHITECTURES ALLOW USERS MORE
        EFFECTIVE ACCESS TO THEIR DATA?                    35
 5.8 CONCLUSIONS                                           36




PROCESS                                                     39

 6.1 INTRODUCTION                                          39
 6.2 MAIN CONCEPTS DISCUSSED                               40
   6.2.1 WHY FOCUS ON PROCESS                              40
   6.2.2 RELIANCE ON PROCESS                               40
   6.2.3 MEASUREMENT AND ASSURANCE OF PROCESS              41
   6.2.4 UNDERSTANDING ASSURANCE AND ITS INGREDIENTS       42
   6.2.5 RELATING PROCESS TO ASSURANCE                     44
 6.2.6 PROCESS ASSURANCE AS A BASIS OF SYSTEM/PRODUCT
 ASSURANCE                                                 44
   6.2.7 PROCESS IMPROVEMENT                               45
 6.3 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS                     46

METRICS AND TESTING                                         49

 7.1 INTRODUCTION                                          49
 7.2 BACKGROUND                                            49
 7.3 RATIONALE FOR ASSURANCE                               50
 7.4 DEFINITION AND PURPOSE OF ASSURANCE                   51
 7.5 KINDS OF ASSURANCE                                    52
 7.6 ASSURANCE TECHNIQUES                                  53
   7.6.1 POLICY ASSURANCE                                  53
   7.6.2 EFFECTIVENESS AND CORRECTNESS ASSURANCE           53
   7.6.3 EVALUATION ASSURANCE                              54
   7.6.4 ENSURING BALANCE                                  54
 7.7 WHERE TESTING FITS IN                                 55
   7.7.1 WHERE AUTOMATED TESTING FITS IN                   55
 7.8 CONCLUSIONS                                           56

RISK MANAGEMENT                                             59

 8.1 INTRODUCTION                                          59
   8.1.1 EXTRACTS FROM REDEFINING SECURITY                 59
   8.1.2 TOOLS NEEDED FOR RISK MANAGEMENT                  60
 8.2 FUNDAMENTAL AND VERY TOUGH QUESTIONS                  61
 8.3 TERMINOLOGY                                           61
 8.4 MULTIDIMENSIONAL COMPLEXITY                           61
 8.5 TRADEOFF AND BALANCE                                  62
 8.6 SCOPE OF IT SECURITY                                  62
 8.7 DECISION MAKING TECHNIQUES                            63
 8.8 DECISION-MAKERS                                       64
 8.9 BASIS FOR DECISIONS                                   64
 8.10 SYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS                               65
 8.11 CONTINGENCY PLANS                                    65
 8.12 DISSEMINATING INFORMATION                            65

CLOSING                                                     67

 9.1 IT SECURITY ASSURANCE WORKSHOP UTILITY                67
 9.2 FUTURE ASSURANCE WORKSHOPS                            67
 9.3 FREQUENCY OF WORKSHOPS                                68
 9.4 OBSERVATIONS ON PROGRESS                              68

LIST OF REFERENCES                                          69


GLOSSARY                                                    75




                        LIST OF FIGURES
                               
                               
FIGURE                                                    PAGE

      1                               Risk Management Process
      52
                      EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
                               
                               
INTRODUCTION

The twofold purpose of the Invitational Workshop on
Information Technology (IT) Assurance and Trustworthiness was
to identify crucial issues on assurance in IT systems and to
provide input into the development of policy guidance for
determining the type and level of assurance appropriate in a
given environment and talk about also guiding future
directions in this area. The workshop participants defined
assurance, as applied to IT products and systems, as the
degree of confidence that security needs are satisfied.

Existing IT security policy guidance is based on computer and
communications architectures of the early 1980s. Technological
changes since that time mandate a review and revision of
policy guidance on assurance and trustworthiness.  These
changes encompass such technologies as distributed systems,
local area networks, the worldwide Internet, policy-enforcing
applications, and public key cryptography.

There is a growing consensus that no one technique can provide
comprehensive adequate assurance. Established approaches need
to be re-examined and compared to newer ideas. Major issues
and concerns include the following:
  
  y   How architecture contributes to assurance
  
      -  The balance of assurance between operating systems
          and applications
      
      -  The management of information security for
          subscribers in a worldwide information
          infrastructure
      
      -  The use of larger, more heterogeneous computing
          environments
  
  y   The growing requirement to enforce policies other than
      confidentiality, such as the following:
      
      -  Integrity and availability (primarily)
      
      -  Non-repudiation or anonymity (occasionally)
  
  y   The relationship between process and assurance
  
Since no metrics exist for determining the effectiveness of
assurance techniques, it is very difficult to compare the
various techniques. Nevertheless, (GAO, 1994) and (JSC, 1994)
recommend approaches for improved cost-effectiveness.

WORKING SESSIONS

The workshop was structured into six working sessions, each of
which is summarized below.

Tradeoffs

Assurance effort for any system should be balanced based on
perceived risk and cost. Application assurance, which has
generally been underemphasized in the past, should be
addressed along with product assurance. There is no single
uniform approach to assurance that will satisfy all kinds of
system applications. To support a balanced approach, assurance
arguments should be assembled from a set of system building
blocks. Concepts of system composition and integration should
allow the assurance analysis to be tailored to specific user
requirements. Assurance evidence should be carefully packaged
to best support enterprise decision-makers during the security
tradeoff process.

Pedigree

The Pedigree session focused on the acceptability of assurance
evidence based on the identity of the creators of that
evidence.  That is, participants discussed assurance evidence
based on the "who" rather than the "what" or "how." The term
"credentials" would also have been a good name for this
session.  The issues can be logically grouped into one of the
following eight categories:

  y   Applicability
  
  y   What is "pedigree"?
  
  y   Assurance based on an individual
  
  y   Assurance based on an organization
  
  y   Measurements/metrics
  
  y   Enforcement and liability
  
  y   Usefulness
  
  y   Aggregation concerns
  
Drawing on the similarities and differences among IT security
professionals and other professionals such as engineers,
certified public accountants, and lawyers, much of the general
discussion addressed the value/drawbacks of formalizing an
informal aspect of assurance.

Security Architecture and Applications

This session aspired to identify opportunities for managing
information security for subscribers in a worldwide
information infrastructure, to learn how architecture
contributes to system assurance, and to understand how
application-specific requirements can be addressed in this
context. We observed a growing requirement to enforce policies
other than confidentiality (e.g.,  integrity, availability,
non-repudiation, or anonymity).

Achieving security solutions that are applicable in a larger,
more heterogeneous computing environment requires a shift from
the current paradigm of developing security for each
individual system toward recognition that security is a global
property that must be addressed throughout the computing
environment. Moreover, each component or system within the
environment has a role to play in the protection of
information. Conventional security approaches can ensure that
these systems or components comply with their defined role.
Some of these approaches were discussed in detail, including
the development of trusted applications and products that
support the enforcement of different policies.

Process

Two fundamental issues for this session were (1) whether
improved and uniform processes for development and evaluation
will lead to higher quality and more predictable evidence and,
hence, better, faster, less expensive assurance and (2) to
what degree can assurance about process contribute to
assurance about products and systems.

The following major topics emerged: assurance about a process;
the relationship of process to system/product assurance; and
process improvement. Fundamental issues regarding process and
assurance and their interrelationships include reliance on
process, particularly the development process, as a major
component of system and product assurance; measurement of
process quality and adherence as a basis for assurance; and
understanding assurance in terms of concepts such as
correctness, effectiveness, and workmanship.

Many interrelated processes exist today; these processes may
be formally stated or conducted in default. While a single
integrated process sounds attractive, it most likely would be
too complex, too high-level, and ineffective.

Metrics and Testing

The session identified five different types of assurance and,
for each type, relevant assurance techniques. This session
discussed what assurance is, how it can be measured, both
qualitatively and quantitatively, and how testing, including
automated testing, fits in to assurance.  Having identified
five different types of assurance, the group identified
relevant assurance techniques for each type.  The five
identified types were: policy assurance, design-effectiveness
assurance, system-correctness assurance, evaluation assurance,
and ensuring balance among the first four types.

This session's main conclusion regarding assurance measurement
was that we have not been collecting the types of data needed
for reliable measurements.

Risk Management

We cannot pretend that by implementing certain security
measures we can mitigate all security risk. This paradigm
shift from risk avoidance to risk management (i.e., risk
tolerance) brings to light the necessity of dealing with the
unimaginable. It is also necessary to consider incomparables
such as system security, human safety, and personal career.
Viewing risk assessment from the standpoint of assets and
threats is necessary but not sufficient.

There are several kinds of risks to which systems are
subjected, including technical, schedule, cost, security, and
safety.  Security risks need to be considered in the context
of overall risks.  Satisfaction of all objectives and
avoidance of all risks are generally impossible to achieve
because the objectives or techniques used to achieve these
objectives are often in conflict.

The members of this session felt that much of current risk
management methodology is an attempt to use the scientific
method for a problem that has not been reduced to science.

Fundamental and very hard questions need to be answered to
make any progress on risk management:  What are the security
requirements, including assurance?  In what ways do we risk
not meeting those requirements?  How much are we willing to
spend to mitigate those risks and to what degree?  What should
be the government's role in helping to protect information
held by private citizens and institutions?  How can government
technology be provided to the private sector for the
protection of sensitive unclassified information?  Will the
private sector accept that technology?

CLOSING

The general consensus was that a forum to discuss the issues
of IT security assurance was of great use to the community. In
particular, this workshop determined that assurance is still a
somewhat nebulous subject. There are many questions that need
to be explored. It is still difficult to define precisely what
is meant by assurance, and the definition varies from person
to person and enterprise to enterprise. The questions of how
to gain assurance, how to convey assurance results, and how to
use assurance all need further study. It was generally felt
that just the identification of these questions for further
study made the workshop a useful exercise.

There was some sentiment that these subjects need to be pushed
back out into the community for actual resolution. The
security community appears to have made little progress in
truly understanding the issues at hand, and there is little
hope for the immediate future. While there appeared to be much
agreement on what had been done incorrectly in the past, there
appeared to be little consensus on how to proceed. One thing
appears clear; in order to improve the security of our
information and resources we must:

  y   Respond in a timely manner to rapidly changing
      technology and threat environment
  
  y   Becomes more proactive and more in touch with the real
      user needs and expectations
  
  y   Does a better job of developing security awareness in
      the user community (to ensure security is built in and
      maintained during operation of the system).

                           SECTION 1
                               
                         INTRODUCTION
                               
                               
Before entrusting valuable information assets to an IT system
and placing an organization in a position of depending on the
confidentiality, integrity, and availability of these assets,
responsible management must be convinced that the IT system is
sufficiently trustworthy to meet the needs of its operational
environment.

Work is under way to produce new national and international
criteria for IT security. These emerging criteria ascribe to
the paradigm of analyzing a given environment to identify
risk, threat, and vulnerability; determining applicable
legislation, policy, and custom; and selecting administrative,
physical, and technical countermeasures that reduce the
residual risk to an acceptable level. These criteria describe
IT security functionality and approaches for assurance, but
they do not include guidance on how to determine the
appropriate and necessary assurances for a particular
environment.

By way of contrast, the TCSEC assumed the presence of a human
adversary who attempts to cause the IT system to behave in a
way contrary to that for which it was intended. While this
assumption has had a dominating influence on assurance for IT
products designed for the military, it is clearly not accurate
for all operational environments.


1.1  PURPOSE OF THIS WORKSHOP

The purpose of this workshop was to document the perceived
state of practice and stimulate new ideas concerning assurance
in security-relevant IT systems. Input from people in the
field who must make decisions about using IT was especially
sought. Publishing this information is designed to provide
input into the development of security policy guidance on
determining the type and level of assurance appropriate in a
given environment. Practically all existing security policy
guidance is based on the Yellow Books, published in 1985
(National Computer Security Center, 1985). This guidance was
based on computer and communications architectures of the
1980s. This workshop addressed questions of how policy
guidance on assurance and trustworthiness needs to be revised
in order to stay consistent with technological changes,
especially those brought about by distributed systems and
related technologies such as local area networks, the
worldwide Internet, policy-enforcing applications, and public
key cryptography.

Security policy guidance combines aspects of technology
assessment, risk analysis, and cost-effectiveness. Trade-offs
between academic and cost-effectiveness considerations must be
made. Answers must be given in the face of inadequate
information and technical uncertainty.

The mission of the workshop was to identify the crucial issues
and to make recommendations for future direction in this area.
Readers of these proceedings include those who handle
sensitive information involving national security, privacy,
commercial value, integrity, and availability.

Participants submitted position papers expressing technical or
policy views, and these position papers were used to identify
working session topics. All accepted position papers were
distributed as anonymous to all participants by e-mail in
advance of the workshop. It was felt that anonymity would
better serve the objective that position papers should
stimulate discussion and not necessarily represent final
positions. For the same reason, the position papers are not
included in this publication.


1.2  PRELIMINARY LIST OF ISSUES

A preliminary list of issues, presented below, was offered to
focus and stimulate the position papers. Not all of these
issues were discussed. In fact, the entire workshop identified
many more problems than it solved. These issues were used to
develop the working session topics listed in Section 1.3.

  y   Assurance is not a one-dimensional quantity, but a
      vector with many components, one for each perceived
      threat in the user environment.
  
  y   Threats need to be more cost-effectively aligned with
      appropriate countermeasures, especially in environments
      where the threat changes dynamically.
  
  y   Precedent may not be the best indicator of what
      assurances are acceptable.
  
  y   Practical considerations of cost-effectiveness strongly
      suggest that pre-deployment product assurance should be
      balanced with operational assurances in the area of
      ongoing system operations and maintenance.
  
  y   There is a danger in becoming too comfortable with the
      alleged intractability of perfect security. We are
      accepting the current crop of half-measures as the best
      attainable.
  
  y   Kinds of guidance that are possible and appropriate need
      to be identified.
  
  y   That guidance can take various forms:
  
      -  Simple formula like Yellow Book risk index
      -  One hundred possible scenarios for best match
  
  y   The benefits of high-assurance techniques such as formal
      methods need to be examined
  
      -  For cost-effectiveness
      -  Comparison to original expectations.
  
  y   Sufficient assurance in some environments can be
      provided by several methods:
  
      -  Conforming with process standard such as
          International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
          (ISO, 1987) 9000.
      -  Employing good software engineering practice
      -  Providing limited warranties for repair of security
          flaws
      -  Using capability maturity models developed by the
          Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon
          University.
  
  y   Direct characterization of product strength is needed,
      in terms of the difficulty of exploiting the flaws in
      the product. One would say that the product is suitable
      for a particular use if its security controls are harder
      to defeat than some pre-determined threshold.


1.3  WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION

There was an opening plenary session, followed by six working
sessions divided into two parallel tracks. Each working
session had a moderator and recorder, listed below, who
produced these proceedings. All of the attendees were given an
opportunity to copy edit these proceedings.

The moderator for each working session started the activities
by summarizing the issues and suggestions. The moderator's
remarks were based, in part, on the position papers submitted.
Although the position papers were not presented at the
workshop, the authors had the opportunity to remain anonymous,
to keep to the position they wrote, or to change their minds.
Some, but not all, of the authors identified themselves.

The working sessions, moderators, and recorders were as
follows:

  Security Assurance Tradeoffs
      Moderator:   Bret Hartman
      Recorder:    Lynne Ambuel

  Pedigree
      Moderator:   Deb Campbell
      Recorder:    Pat Toth

  Security Architecture and Applications
      Moderator:   Judy Froscher
      Recorder:    Jay Kahn

  Process
      Moderator:   Joel Sachs
      Recorder:    Caralyn Wichers

  Metrics and Testing
      Moderator:   Jim Williams
      Recorder:    Caralyn Wichers

  Risk Management
      Moderator:   Marshall Abrams
      Recorder:    Lynne Ambuel


1.4  TERMINOLOGY

Participants agreed that the pronoun we is often overused or
ambiguous. Usually it refers to the set of people working on
information security issues, sometimes called the information
security community. Sometimes it referred to the technical
subset of the information security community, excluding the
managers. Sometimes it is the regal we. Occasionally, it
referred to us_the workshop participants. We hope that no one
is unnecessarily confused by this usage. Any confusion in this
publication probably reflects how well we understand each
other.


1.5  DOCUMENT ORGANIZATION

As stated previously, the remaining sections of this document
correspond with the plenary and working sessions of the
workshop: Section 2, "Opening Plenary"; Section 3, "Security
Assurance Tradeoffs"; Section 4, "Pedigree"; Section 5,
"Security Architecture and Applications"; Section 6,
"Process"; Section 7, "Metrics and Testing"; Section 8, "Risk
Management." The document concludes with closing statements
cited in Section 9 and an appendix describing security
services applied to the THETA system.

                           SECTION 2
                               
                      THE OPENING PLENARY
                               
                               
The opening plenary session began by defining the objectives
of the workshop: provide input to policy guidance in the face
of inadequate information and technical uncertainty; identify
the type and level of assurance appropriate in a given
environment; combine and trade-off aspects of technology
assessment, risk analysis, and cost-effectiveness, recognizing
that we may not be able to afford academic completeness; and
identify crucial issues and make recommendations. Participants
were asked to focus on assurance and resist the temptation to
solve all information security problems.

Several sets of extracts from Redefining Security (Joint
Security Commission [JSC], 1994) set the stage for discussion.
While the report address the situation in the United States
(U.S.), it is probably applicable to other countries as well.
The motivational observations included:

  y   Protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and
      availability of the nation's information systems and
      information assets_both public and private_must be among
      our highest national priorities.
  
  y   IT is evolving at a faster rate than information systems
      security technology.
  
  y   A systems approach is necessary in making decisions
      about the application of security countermeasures.
  
  y   Countermeasures are frequently out of balance with the
      threat, often based on worst-case scenarios rather than
      realistic assessments of threats and vulnerabilities.
  
  y   Security is a service that should be based on an
      integrated assessment of threat, vulnerability, and
      customer needs.
  
  y   Security is a balance between opposing equities.

The JSC observations about threats to information and
information security included:

  y   Networks are recognized as a battlefield of the future.
  
  y   An attack on unprotected civilian infrastructures could
      be disastrous.
  
  y   Foreign intelligence services, including those of some
      of our "allies," are known to target U.S. information
      systems .
  
  y   Computer viruses, other malicious software, and hackers
      are increasingly common and dangerous.
  
  y   Hiding information about security flaws from ourselves
      doesn't help.
  
  y   Eighty-five percent of computer crime is committed by
      insiders with validated access.
  
Observations about failed strategies served to remind the
participants that business as usual is unacceptable:
  
  y   Encouraging the private sector to design, develop, and
      manufacture products at their own expense against
      government promise to require their use: the government
      did not follow through and buy the products.
  
  y   Research has focused on classified information to the
      detriment of protecting unclassified information and
      infrastructure.

The JSC-recommended strategies directed the focus to
constructive criticism:

  y   Promoting understanding in the private sector that it is
      less expensive to protect information assets with
      affordable technology than with insurance should result
      in availability of moderate-assurance security products.
  
  y   Government funding is necessary to promote development
      of high-assurance products.
  
  y   It would be reasonable to allocate five to ten percent
      of total development and operational cost to ensure
      availability, confidentiality, and integrity.
  
  y   Research and development (R&D) should be coordinated and
      focused on products for protection of classified and
      unclassified networks and systems.
  
  y   Infrastructure security management should be given more
      attention.
  
  
                           SECTION 3
                               
                 SECURITY ASSURANCE TRADEOFFS
                               
                               
                    Bret Hartman, Moderator
                    Lynne Ambuel, Recorder
                               
                               
3.1  INTRODUCTION

This session addressed security assurance tradeoffs. Security
assurance tradeoff decisions occur in many contexts, such as
assurance benefit versus cost, the relationship of assurance
to system functionality, and the requirements on assurance
imposed by the value of information stored in the system. The
group discussed a variety of tradeoff issues as well as the
current views of the security community. Tradeoffs issues were
a fundamental theme of the workshop_the group discussions cut
across many of the other sessions.

The position papers discussed during this session were
representative of the growing opinion that the Department of
Defense Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria (TCSEC)
(Department of Defense [DOD], 1985) does not necessarily have
the appropriate emphasis on assurance. The TCSEC focuses all
efforts on the trusted computing base (TCB), which in the
traditional view is the collection of hardware and software
that enforces the underlying system security policy. By
enforcing the security policy, the TCB thus ensures that
untrusted non-TCB software may safely access sensitive
information without danger of compromise.

Experience has shown, however, that there are several problems
with this approach. Traditional high-assurance systems (e.g.,
B3 or A1) are difficult to use because of limited
functionality and the potential impact on performance. It
remains to be determined whether it is practical to produce
high assurance and high functionality products. In addition,
the assurance evidence required is difficult and time-
consuming to produce and evaluate.

Furthermore, a traditional TCB may not adequately address the
security requirements in applications. Applications include
general-purpose systems such as Database Management Systems
(DBMS) and financial management systems, highly focused
systems such as process control, and in-between systems that
focus on a broad market segment such as a military message
system.

Applications frequently have different security tradeoffs than
the underlying TCB. The narrow security policy of the TCB may
not be sufficient to protect against many application-specific
security requirements in areas such as accountability,
availability, integrity, and the prevention of information
leakage through known covert channels in the TCB.

The group discussed possible solutions to the limitations of
the TCSEC approach to TCB assurance. One potential direction
is to extend the system security perimeter to include both the
TCB and the Controlled Application Set (CAS). The CAS is the
set of applications that have access to sensitive information
and thus are subject to additional constraints beyond those
enforced by the TCB. Identifying the CAS is consistent with
security measures in practice today, where certain critical
applications are carefully controlled and analyzed.

Another direction is to recognize that certain security
functions beyond those typically implemented within the TCB
can help augment application security. For example,
containment mechanisms can limit damage caused by rogue
applications. Application-specific security checks within the
application may also contribute significantly to overall
system assurance.

Finally, the notion of balanced assurance was a common
discussion theme during the session. Balanced assurance
promotes the use of assurance techniques appropriate to the
level of risk in system components. Based on the level of risk
for specific components, different assurance techniques would
be used as appropriate. For example, if discretionary access
enforcement were considered a lower risk than mandatory access
control for some system application, then mandatory access
control mechanisms would be subject to much greater scrutiny.

In order to make any security assurance approach feasible, we
must recognize that it is not possible to eliminate the risk
of a security compromise. Security assurance must always be a
balance between cost and perceived risk. The primary assurance
tradeoff involves one central issue: the balance of assurance
cost versus the resulting security benefit.


3.2  MAIN CONCEPTS DISCUSSED

In order to focus the discussion of assurance tradeoffs, the
group discussed four concepts, presented below as questions:

  y   What is wrong with the TCSEC emphasis on TCB assurance?
  
  y   Why is security of a TCB different from security of an
      application?
  
  y   Is it possible to quantify assurance versus
      vulnerability tradeoffs?
  
  y   Who (e.g., policy makers, vendors, application
      developers, accreditors) should make tradeoff decisions?

Each of these questions is addressed below.


3.3  WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE TCSEC EMPHASIS ON TCB ASSURANCE?

The TCSEC emphasis on the TCB is inflexible_the TCSEC assumes
a pre-defined set of threats (e.g., Trojan horse attacks) that
are not necessarily relevant in all systems. Based on these
threats, the TCSEC asserts that the TCB is the totality of
required security mechanisms. In most systems, the TCB is the
subset of the operating system that enforces access control,
especially Bell-LaPadula (Bell-LaPadula, 1975) properties.
Although the TCB has a significant role in enforcing system
security, practice has shown that applications also have a
large role. For this reason, it is important to examine how
assurance applies to applications.

In the non-DOD commercial world, assurance has a different
emphasis. TCSEC assurance is usually too demanding for
commercial applications. Assurance appears to have a bad
connotation for many customers, indicating a product that is
expensive and does not necessarily provide good performance.
Despite the apprehension about high-assurance systems,
customers still want the same result: they want to be sure
that a product works as it is intended.

The provision of product warranties appears to be a growing
trend for assurance in the commercial world. Although the most
common approach to commercial software development is
perceived to have been to release unreliable code first and
then fix bugs as they are discovered, this approach is
becoming less common. X/Open, for example, is developing a
branding process that entails the endorsement of software
backed by a clearly defined vendor commitment to a defined
standard of quality. When a vendor makes a public
pronouncement that its UNIX system conforms to X/Open's
branding scheme, it is committing to maintain this standard.
If it is shown that a product does not actually meet X/Open
requirements and the vendor does not correct the problem in a
timely fashion, then that vendor may lose the right to use the
X/Open Logo. When and if this becomes public knowledge the
vendor may suffer embarrassment and lose market credibility
and market share.

The concept of a system containing "no obvious flaws" would be
desirable as a basic security assurance requirement. If a
standard list of known flaws were published and frequently
updated, products could be tested against the list. This
notion is similar to the current approach taken by virus-
detection software. Although it is well known that assurance
based solely on existing penetration attacks is inherently
limited, this simple assurance approach would be a significant
improvement over the current state of practice in most
commercial systems.


3.4  WHY IS SECURITY OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM TCB DIFFERENT
FROM SECURITY OF AN APPLICATION?

In is generally accepted that the operating system cannot
address all aspects of application-specific security because
it is not possible to provide all security in an application-
independent manner. There is some debate whether the security-
relevant part of an application should be considered part of
the TCB. Although an operating system TCB provides the
underlying basis (e.g., identification and authentication) for
building application security properties, it has traditionally
emphasized enforcement of confidentiality. Applications tend
to support other security properties, such as integrity and
availability, that are specific to the problem domain.
Tradeoffs of security properties (e.g., integrity versus
confidentiality) must be based on operational requirements
rather than a priori constraints defined in the TCSEC.

The group agreed that the focus of system security must shift.
Too much emphasis has been placed on assurance of products,
and too little has been placed on assurance of systems. We
need to spend more time and effort building and analyzing
operational systems; product evaluation is only the first step
of this process. Furthermore, we need to emphasize upgrading
and maintaining the level of assurance once a system becomes
operational. Assurance maintenance continues to be a neglected
area for both products and systems.

Basic building blocks that define subsystem abstractions are a
critical aspect for developing assurance. Rather than a
monolithic assurance approach, wherein the developer must
follow a predefined formula, assurance in the form of building
blocks allows developers and users to tailor assurance to
their particular system. For example, military systems that
primarily require confidentiality have traditionally
concentrated on assurance of the underlying operating system,
while commercial systems requiring integrity may address
application software much more heavily. As discussed in
Section 5, application security is becoming increasingly
important for confidentiality policies as well. It may be
appropriate to concentrate assurance on the areas with the
most perceived risk.

The TCSEC approach of relying on the operating system to
provide integrity to all security-relevant functions needs to
be re-examined. Its validity limits need to be probed and
alternative bases, if any, need to be explored.

In order to define system building blocks, we need assurance
guidance for interconnecting subsystems, applications, and
products. Further research is still required in this area_the
concept of system composability, although defined for limited
domains, needs to be developed further. Support for
distributed systems, which are gaining widespread use, is
particularly important. We also need to refine the concept of
product integration. The fundamental issue is one of systems
engineering: how to integrate subsystems into a larger system
while preserving assurance.


3.5  IS IT POSSIBLE TO QUANTIFY ASSURANCE VERSUS VULNERABILITY
TRADEOFFS?

Many issues must be considered when performing assurance
tradeoff analyses. This difficult task becomes even more
complicated because many of the decisions are highly
subjective. If quantitative measures to aid in tradeoff
analyses could be developed, complexity of the tradeoff
decision might be reduced.

The group generally agreed that it was easier to quantify
assurance tradeoffs by focusing on security vulnerabilities
rather than security risks. Doing this may create a gap
between quantification efforts and the risk containment and
reduction goals identified in Sections 1, 3.4, 5, and 7.4,
however. Current risk-analysis techniques are largely
subjective, and are based on the judgment of expected threats
to system security in a given environment rather than on
actual experience. Objective risk-analysis techniques are
discussed briefly in Sections 8.1 and 8.7. Security
vulnerabilities can be largely assessed using purely technical
criteria_while a particular vulnerability either exists or
does not exist in a system, ease of exploitation may vary
considerably. Because vulnerabilities can be identified
objectively, they provide an attractive means for trading off
against assurance. Assurance considerations in
assurance/vulnerability tradeoffs are correctness of the
mechanism/product/system, and the effectiveness of the
mechanism in protecting against the perceived threat, often
quantified as the level of effort required to subvert the
assets being protected. Additional relevant kinds of assurance
are identified in Section 7.5.

It was generally accepted that the assurance paradigm
presented in the TCSEC has been insufficient to address
tradeoff decisions between types of assurance and
vulnerability. The TCSEC prescribes specific assurance
measures for avoiding vulnerabilities. However, the TCSEC does
not consider many of the tradeoff decisions now being made in
practice, such as tradeoffs between assurance measures and
requirements on usability and performance. This limitation has
often resulted in avoiding awkward trusted configurations
during peacetime operations, hoping that the security features
will work properly during a crisis.

Making tradeoff decisions among mechanisms that perform a
specific security function is a relatively straightforward
task. Unfortunately, this aspect is only a small portion of
the tradeoffs to be made. Cost, functionality, mechanisms, and
assurances are all part of the decision. It is often difficult
to make tradeoffs among these concerns because they are
incomparable. However, these inter-disciplinary tradeoffs are
often the ones that have the most impact on the
product/system.

The complexity of the tradeoff decision changes depending on
the subsystem being addressed_the larger the scope, the more
complicated the decision. Tradeoffs made at the component
(product) design level can be very straightforward. System-
level tradeoffs can be more complicated because all of the
composing products/systems must be considered. There are also
tradeoff decisions made at the enterprise level that take into
account the non-technical factors (e.g., social, legal, way of
doing business). These tradeoff activities are not independent
and are highly influenced by each other. An enterprise
tradeoff decision is likely to influence the tradeoff decision
made in the system and therefore in the design of the
components of the system.

The group discussed possible metrics for a decision-maker to
use when deciding on how much assurance should be included in
a given product/system. The classic decision factor has been
provided to the decision-maker by the assurance levels
enumerated in the TCSEC and the companion Yellow Book. These
prescribed levels have proven to be inadequate for many
decision-makers because they do not take cost into
consideration.

A member of the group suggested that assurance cost as a
percentage of development cost may be a good tradeoff metric.
The group decided that this could be one useful tradeoff, but
did not consider several important factors. It is difficult to
measure development cost because life-cycle costs are often
open ended. Also, the group felt that the value of the
information protected needed to be taken into consideration_a
small, relatively inexpensive component that performs a
crucial function may need considerably more assurance, as a
percentage of development cost, than a large multipurpose
system.

The problem with adding information value into the tradeoff
discussion is that the value of information is difficult to
ascertain. An enterprise would need to determine the value of
its information for both the enterprise and for its
adversaries. In some circumstances, a value cannot be placed
on information (e.g., loss of life, enterprise survival). This
complicates the quantification further. In the end, it was
decided that the determination of information value will
always have a subjective component. Although it is a factor in
considering tradeoffs against assurance cost, it cannot be
relied upon as the sole factor.


3.6  WHO (E.G., POLICY MAKERS, VENDORS, APPLICATION
DEVELOPERS,         ACCREDITORS) SHOULD MAKE TRADEOFF
DECISIONS?

The group agreed that the trend for the assurance tradeoff
decision-makers is moving away from policy makers and toward
developers and system enterprises. While the TCSEC promotes a
fixed set of tradeoff options embodied in the criteria
assurance levels, most systems require further assurance
decisions based on the specific needs of their application.

To evaluate assurance tradeoffs, it is necessary to recognize
the role of an organization's "risk-taker". This authority is
the member of the enterprise who has the responsibility for
deciding the level of acceptable security risk that is
appropriate for system installations. The risk-taker makes
primarily political and operational management decisions based
on the enterprise goals and the perceived threat environment.

Security assurance documentation is the principal technical
information supplied to the risk-taker. Those people providing
the security assurance analysis have the responsibility to
supply to the risk-taker with the most complete and accurate
assessment possible. However, this information, which will be
highly technical, may not be in a form easily understood by
the risk-taker. Assurance documentation must be packaged to
define overall assurance in the best form possible to help
risk-takers do their job.

High-level managerial decisions that are based on complex
technical rationale can be difficult to formulate. The
documentation must discuss alternatives in a form so that the
risk-taker can clearly see possible tradeoffs. One approach to
support tradeoff decisions is to provide a set of security
questions for the risk-taker to consider. If the risk-taker is
satisfied that the answers to the questions sufficiently
address the enterprise security goals, then the risk-taker has
a basis for making a decision. In this manner, security is
driven primarily by the system procurement authority and
program manager rather than by product developers.


3.7  CONCLUSIONS

Participants in this session discussed a wide variety of
topics related to security assurance tradeoffs. In general,
the group appeared to reach consensus on the current state of
security assurance tradeoffs as well as directions for future
investigation. The group felt that application assurance has
received too little emphasis in the past, and it should
receive more. The assurance effort must be balanced for any
system based on the perceived system risk. There is no single
uniform approach to providing assurance that will satisfy all
kinds of system applications. To support a balanced approach,
assurance arguments should be assembled from a set of system
building blocks. Concepts of system composition and
integration should allow the assurance analysis to be tailored
to specific user requirements. Models of product, system, and
enterprise tradeoffs should be used to help identify the
levels of tradeoff decision-making. Finally, the group
recognized the role of the "risk-taker" as the decision-maker
of enterprise security tradeoffs, and advocated that assurance
evidence should be packaged to provide the best support to the
tradeoff process.

                           SECTION 4
                               
                           PEDIGREE
                               
                               
                    Deb Campbell, Moderator
                      Pat Toth, Recorder


4.1  INTRODUCTION

As presented in one of the submitted papers, pedigree suggests
a method to determine the acceptability of evidence based on
the identity of the creators of that evidence. Pedigree may be
based on an individual's identity or on the organization that
produced the evidence.

The goal of this session was to articulate the pertinent
questions and identify the issues pertaining to pedigree. The
sessions began by highlighting some of the main points of the
submitted papers as a means of stimulating ideas and
discussion. The main points as presented were the following:

  y   Where evidence of assurance is not suitable for being
      reused or being validated, the pedigree of the evidence
      can be used as a surrogate.
  
  y   The acceptance of a checklist instead of the evidence
      itself is essentially the reuse of evidence by the
      acceptance of its pedigree.
  
  y   An accreditor might accept the pedigree of the certifier
      and use the associated report as the primary basis for
      the accreditation decision. (Additionally, the challenge
      was posed that if the accreditor bases the decision on
      pedigree of certifier, was the report even necessary?)
  
  y   The practice of accepting evidence based on pedigrees
      will lead to islands of trust.
  
  y   Evidence with a weak pedigree could/would/should be
      subjected to more scrutiny.
  
  y   A pedigree may derive from the tools used.
  
  y   Most users make the mistake of narrowly basing their
      judgments on personal experiences. For example:
  
      -  If they know and trust product developers, the
          process the developer follows is less important.
      
      -  If they know and do not trust the developers, no
          process will convince them that the developer's
          product is of high quality.
      
      -  Logically, it follows that they might trust
          developers they do not know as long as the
          developers have name recognition.


4.2  ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH PEDIGREE

The introductory period was followed by a brainstorming
exercise among the eleven session participants. Each idea was
recorded and later organized into groups of issues based on
the natural relationships between each issue1.

The groups of issues provided below are the initial result of
the session. Due to time constraints, only minimal sanity
checks were made to determine if all issues were correctly
grouped or if other relevant issues were missing.


4.2.1     What Is A Pedigree?

  y   Confidence can be based on tools, people, and
      organizations. How can they be balanced? Does one weigh
  off more than another?
  
  y   How do you apply pedigree to an unknown entity?
  
  y   How is a pedigree established? Can a new company gain a
      pedigree by hiring a consultant with an established
      pedigree?
  
  y   Maybe the pedigree concept is misnamed and should be
      called credentials. Credentials has an updating
      connotation to it, rather than a birthright which
      pedigree implies.
  
  y   Should pedigree provide assurance based on what you have
      done in the past, as opposed to what you are currently
      doing? Once a pedigree is established, how long is it
      valid without being updated?
  
  y   Should pedigrees be multidimensional and not
      oversimplified? That is, a simple one word label for a
      pedigree may not convey enough information to be useful.
  
  y   A pedigree can be thought of as an integrity label.
      However, to be useful, must pedigrees be considered in a
      broader context?
  

4.2.2     Applicability

  y   For which qualities of a system or product is pedigree a
      useful measure (e.g., correctness, effectiveness,
      reliability, workmanship)?
  
  y   Is it agreed that pedigree makes a difference based on
      roles (e.g., accreditor, developer, security engineer,
      integrator, certifier, criteria writer, evaluator,
      profiler, user)?
  
  y   Can pedigree be extended to a tool or is it limited to
      individuals and/or organizations?
  
  y   What does pedigree buy me? What evidence can I waive if
      I have pedigree? Do I need to provide more or less
      evidence based on a positive, nonexistent, or negative
      pedigree?
  
  y   How does pedigree feed into assurance?
  
  y   What is the relationship among effectiveness,
      correctness, and pedigree?
  
  y   Can pedigree and criteria be viewed as opposites?
      Criteria in some cases may be viewed as overriding
      pedigree and in other cases there may not be a conflict.
      Perhaps criteria are not necessary.
  
  y   Does a pedigree have coattails? Is pedigree extendable?
      Is pedigree applicable across all products made by
      developer?

4.2.3     Individual Pedigree

  y   Should we be skeptical of individual pedigrees? Loyalty
      to your company may be an overriding factor. Individuals
      may be stifled due to loyalty to the company or
      organization.
  
  y   Should we decide to read something or not depending on
      who the author is?
  
  y   What is the importance of your personal knowledge/trust
      of people by name?
  
  y   What is the importance of people to the organization's
      pedigree? If a person leaves a company, does the trust
      level go down unless an "equally known and respected"
      person replaces him/her?
  
  y   What are the elements of an individual pedigree, such as
      knowledge, training, and precedent?
  
4.2.4     Organizational Pedigree

  y   Why are we skeptical of organizational pedigrees? If
      pedigree is associated with too large an organization,
      it may lose meaning. If worldwide conglomerate XXX has a
      pedigree, does every division carry that same pedigree
      or should the pedigree be limited to divisions?
  
  y   What is the importance of people to the organization's
      pedigree? If a person leaves a company, does the trust
      level go down unless an "equally known and respected"
      person replaces him/her?
  
  y   What is the level of granularity of pedigree associated
      with organization.
  
  y   How do small companies develop a pedigree?
  
  y   What is the difference/similarity between individual
      versus organizational pedigrees?
  
4.2.5     Measurements

  y   How can we collect security cost data?
  
  y   Can regression analysis be used to establish risk?
  
  y   Who decides what the standards are for pedigree? Who
      selects the judges?
  
  y   Should there be a licensing requirement for pedigrees as
      in other professions, such as certified public
      accountants, doctors, or lawyers? This topic also raises
      the issue of liability.
  
  y   How should we institutionalize the process for
      evaluating pedigrees? Should the process be
      institutionalized?
  
4.2.6     Enforcement

  y   Are individuals/organizations true to their pedigree?
      How do you know if the process is followed correctly
      once the pedigree has been established?
  
  y   Can you regain a lost pedigree?
  
  y   What is the liability of a pedigree?
  
  y   Pedigree is not a one-time stamp, so what elements do
      you re-evaluate?
  
  y   How do I protect my interest against a company with a
      pedigree?
  
4.2.7     Usefulness

  y   How do we capture what an individual or an organization
      has learned during the process?
  
  y   Should we give the "edge" to new products? What should
      be the balance to pedigree and innovation? Magazine
      reviews always tend to favor the newer, slicker
      products.
  
  y   What are the ramifications of "buying" based on
      pedigree?
  
  y   Are pedigrees useful for high-assurance systems? Or
      should they be limited to low-assurance systems?
  
  y   Is pedigree applicable for all products?
  
  y   Is there anything you can rely on except pedigree for
      legacy systems?
  
  y   Regarding networks of trust, if a trusts b and b trusts
      c, should a trust c?
  
4.2.8     Aggregation

  y   If we have a large system and a large number of people
      working on it with individual pedigrees at various
      levels, what is the pedigree associated with the system?
  
  y   Does a pedigree associated with a system change during
      the life cycle of that system? If the developer had a
      high pedigree but the integrator had a low pedigree,
      what is the pedigree of the system?
  
  y   How do we determine pedigrees on components of systems?
      What are the rules of composition for pedigrees?
  
  y   If you have a strong pedigree early in the process, do
      you need a strong pedigree late in the process?
      Conversely, if you have a weak pedigree early in the
      process, do you need a strong pedigree late in the
      process? This is a certification problem.
  
  
4.3  CONCLUSIONS

The session concluded with a discussion that focused on
several key issues, listed below.

4.3.1     Terminology

One must be careful when introducing a new term, such as
pedigree. The term itself may project a meaning that may or
may not accurately reflect the intended concept. It is
critical that the corresponding concept be thoroughly explored
and the terminology match the intended meaning. This workshop
allowed participants to delve into this concept in great
detail. As a result, it become evident that pedigree, although
used almost exclusively in this session, is not the best term
to capture the intended concept. The dictionary definition of
pedigree is a line of ancestors; lineage. This infers a
birthright that is clearly not intended.

An alternate term suggested was credentials. (A dictionary
definition of credentials is (1) that which entitles one to
confidence, credit, or authority; or (2) evidence or
testimonials attesting to one's right to credit, confidence,
or authority.) Although the group did not reach a consensus
during the session to adopt the term credentials in lieu of
pedigree, it was felt that a term such as credentials was
probably more appropriate for conveying the intended concept.

4.3.2     Categorizing

The concept of grouping pedigree or credentials into three
categories based on roles of the individual/organization was
introduced. Earlier in the brainstorming exercise, it was
suggested that this concept could apply the same or
differently depending upon the role of the individual or
organization (See Section 4.2.2). It was initially proposed
that perhaps three categories (builders, evaluators, and,
approvers) would be sufficient. It was also suggested that
possibly the latter two could be combined into one category,
leaving just two high-level categories for consideration. No
conclusion was reached; further efforts in examining this
proposed concept would be necessary, especially if a formal
credentials process were implemented.

4.3.3     Formal versus Informal Implementations

Many of the issues discussed in the later half of the session
focused on issues that can be grouped under the major heading
of whether the issue of pedigree versus credentials should be
formalized within the IT security community. This concept is
clearly not new nor is it limited to security. It is something
we have in everyday life, both formally (e.g., certified
public accountants, doctors, lawyers) and informally (e.g.,
make of car you chose, the dealer you bought it from), or even
somewhere in between (e.g., doctor referral service, consumer
reports).

Whether formalized or not, this concept is a channel of
information that is currently used, albeit on a more informal
basis. We listen to those we have come to trust; many do buy
products/systems based on who was the developer or integrator,
for example.

Many correlations can be drawn to other professional
occupations. However, differences do exist. One example cited
during the discussion was the construction of a bridge.
Clearly, the engineers have received formal training and are
licensed. However, strict, measurable requirements for the
actual construction also exist. In the area of IT security,
similar requirements are not so easily identified.

Formalizing the process of obtaining credentials of an IT
security professional raises numerous corresponding issues. Is
it worth the effort for an individual/organization to obtain
formal credentials if they are not able to make a tradeoff for
something else; (i.e., not having to produce as much evidence
as the individual/organization who does not have formal
credentials)? Liability concerns are an equally important
issue. Much insight could be gained in identifying other
significant issues from further comparisons to other
occupations that currently have a formal process for obtaining
credentials as well as those that do not.
                           SECTION 5
                               
            SECURITY ARCHITECTURE AND APPLICATIONS
                               
                               
                   Judy Froscher, Moderator
                      Jay Kahn, Recorder

  "Our paradigm for managing information security must shift
  from developing security for each individual application,
  system, and network to developing security for subscribers
  within the worldwide utility."
               Joint Security Commission Report, 1 March 1994


5.1  INTRODUCTION

The twofold purpose of this session was to identify the
opportunities for managing information security for
"subscribers within the worldwide utility" and to discuss how
architecture contributes to system assurance. The starting
point for this session was the report of the JSC, Redefining
Security (JSC, 1994). While not endorsing or even considering
every finding in this report, the session participants agreed
that the report provided challenging objectives and should be
used as a source of provocative ideas.

Chapter 8 of the JSC report, "Information Systems Security,"
clearly identifies networking and distributed systems as
essential to tomorrow's architecture. Further, the report
notes that as a nation, we can no longer afford to develop
unique solutions to what appear to be standard problems.

The moderator identified the following three security
challenges from the JSC report, which were used as long-term
national goals during the workshop discussion:

  y   Encourage distributed architectures.
  y   Discourage stovepipe2 solutions.
  y   Discourage multilevel secure (MLS) stovepipe systems.

With this introduction, the following five questions were used
as discussion points for this session:

  y   Is understanding and implementing security in
      distributed systems less achievable or just more
      difficult? How does distribution increase complexity?
  
  y   Are we focused too much on operating system (OS)
      security? Do we need trusted applications?
  
  y   How can security architectures ease assurance arguments?
  
  y   Can some security architectures allow integration of new
      technologies, support more secure use of legacy systems,
      and promote assurance?
  
  y   Can different security architectures allow users more
      effective access to their data?
     

While these goals and questions framed the security
architecture and applications discussion, most session
participants had not considered how security in the large
could be achieved. Hence, much of the discussion centered on
understanding requirements and how emerging technologies could
support security in a worldwide, distributed computing
environment. Most participants were much more at ease in
postulating security solutions for dedicated applications or
for small confederations of simple, homogeneous systems, to
which more conventional MLS approaches are applicable.
Security architectures that could promote the management and
protection of information in a worldwide information
infrastructure proved too much of a paradigm shift for this
forum.

The group reached a consensus definition of security
architecture. A security architecture is the structure of
protection mechanisms that allow the enforcement of a security
policy. Security architectures are not unique. The same
security policy can be enforced using different security
architectures. That is we can rely on different compositions
of mechanisms to enforce the same policy. Our goal is to
define security architectures that promote the enforcement of
a security policy and make the assurance argument as
straightforward and simple as possible.

Security architectures can ease the assurance argument by
explicitly identifying the role of different parts of a system
in enforcing a security policy, identifying dependencies among
different parts of the protection mechanisms, and allowing
focused assurance strategies for each security-relevant part
of the system.  Security architectures allow us to compose
systems to enforce a policy that governs the security behavior
of the combined systems.


5.2  NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING

Two current technologies that could support distributed
architectures were highlighted. The first of these
technologies involves Object Oriented (OO) development
paradigms, as manifested in OO designs, OO data management
systems, and OO programming languages. There is a subtle
difference between OO design and development methodologies and
actual OO systems. The blurring of this distinction is quite
confusing. While it is unclear at this time what are the
consequences of embedding security attributes within objects,
the highly dynamic nature of linking and re-linking of objects
is a cause for security concern. This dynamic linking and re-
linking of objects is quite different from traditional systems
in which security architectures and policies can be regarded
as static.

What supporting security mechanisms will be required to
interface with the object's embedded security parameters is an
unresolved question. The entire success of OO technology
itself is open to question. Other similarly promising
technologies have emerged in the past without having
significant long-term effects on automatic data processing
(ADP) development. The security implications of OO technology
are currently under investigation in several R&D efforts, but
the efforts are too immature to predict any results.

The second technology addresses client-server systems. Client-
server technology has already captured a significant portion
of the ADP market. This technology has the commercial
advantage of being cost-effective in replacing aging mainframe
systems.

From a security perspective, client-server technology will
introduce difficulty as it will require parts of the security
policy to be enforced in different, sometimes heterogeneous,
hosts. However, a consistent access control policy can be used
to manage data access servers, while complex applications with
application-specific and user-specific interfaces can run on
powerful client processors. Perhaps if these applications
transmit information at only one security level, clients can
operate without trust from a confidentiality standpoint.
However, accommodating policies of assured delivery, non-
repudiation, separation of roles, or availability will
increase difficulty. The employment of widely used,
commercially available application software can reduce the
risk of integrity vulnerabilities. The seemingly unmanageable
interactions among clients and servers can be controlled
through transaction management, which can guarantee that many
of the integrity concerns that have been discussed in this
session do not result in chaos and unpredictability.

The goal of this workshop session was not to solve all of the
security problems inherent in either of these two emerging
technologies, but rather to recognize that any evolving
security development will have to function in either or both
of these technological environments.


5.3  IS UNDERSTANDING AND IMPLEMENTING SECURITY IN LARGER
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS LESS ACHIEVABLE?

5.3.1     Policy Issues

We observed an expanding need to have policies other than
confidentiality. These include polices for integrity,
availability, and anonymity. We need to have some attributes
that characterize both users and data, and that can be used to
make decisions about accesses between them. The semantics of
these attributes and the attendant accesses depend on specific
security policy objectives.

As our computing environment evolves toward a distributed one,
it appears that it will become more difficult to assume
single, uniform policy coverage. Distributed systems will
require multiple security policies and enforcement in multiple
domains. These policies will have to be enforced within the
system's primary domain, and be applicable, or at least not
violated, while in other domains. This multidomain,
multipolicy environment will lead to the development of
metapolicies that tell us how to make policies. The concept of
metapolicies introduces complexities that are not scalable
from the current environment. This concept also provides
initial evidence that security for distributed systems will be
a much more difficult problem than found in a traditional
single system TCSEC environment.

Once metapolicies are introduced, the follow-up question must
be "Where are decisions made?" We identified three possible
answers:

  y   At the developer's facility
  y   By the system manager when the system is loaded and
      configured
  y   Dynamically as necessary

If decisions are made dynamically, it appears that artificial
intelligence engines may be required to provide automated
capabilities exceeding the level of sophistication available
today. However, if decisions can be pre-determined, security
solutions become possible. Again, the complexity inherent in
implementing a security policy that can be tailored at the
site also increases the difficulty of providing a distributed
security implementation.

It has been recognized that there are problems remaining with
creating rather simple security policies. Policy-makers desire
clear, concise rules. If rules can be defined that are
appropriate in every contingency, then the policy-maker has
succeeded. However, sometimes policy is only a mechanism in
disguise. Policies are rarely complete or concise, nor are
they always applicable. When we create security policies, we
document and circulate them believing that the policy
statements reflect a pragmatic approach for doing business. As
long as the users are able to perform their jobs without
feeling hindered, frustrated, at risk, or foolish, they nearly
always adhere to the policy. However, if users feel that
policy interferes with the mission, generally it is the policy
that is discarded rather than the mission. Examples of user
resistance include the work-to-rule industrial action, the
unauthorized sharing of restricted data, or the undocumented
disregard for policy.

The conversation described above highlights the issue that we
use an imprecise medium, the English language, to document
policy statements. The policy that we write reflects the way
we want things to operate, and it may be self-contradictory,
incomplete, or ambiguous. Further, the policy description
defines expectations of how we think we would like the policy
to be. A systemic review, such as one conducted as part of a
reengineering review, might lead to a different statement of
the security policy.

Security policy, like most policies, is often expounded by
upper management. These policy statements are interpreted by
middle management as rules to be implemented, while conforming
to and often preserving the existing middle-management
corporate view. This understanding of how policy is made and
implemented raises the following question: Is there really a
difference between high-level statements about desirable goals
and security policy rules? There are concerns in that these
differences can be important, that we are striving for
nebulous goals instead of crisp, clear policies, and that
there is no ideal methodology for separating the two concerns.
Ultimately, the issue is one of control: Who, then, is right,
the management or the system's designers?

To implement high-level policy for an actual system, the
system designer must first decide which enforcement mechanisms
must be automated and which will be enforced procedurally or
by trusting personnel. to behave ethically. These decisions
must be consistent with policy enforcement throughout a
distributed confederation of autonomous, heterogeneous
systems. The challenge is to make design and policy decisions
that promote lower risk solutions.

5.3.2     Access Issues

While access determinations eventually evolve into binary
decisions, to make these determinations when multiple policies
are in effect, it may be necessary to use new kinds of
mechanisms. A candidate mechanism is fuzzy logic3. It was
noted that fuzzy logic is widely used today in real
situations, but the fuzzy logic processor is a human being.
Implicit in this discussion is the realization that users need
complex security access rules involving factors such as day of
the week, time of day, the user's physical location, and the
user's role.

5.3.3     Scalability Issues

The issue of increasing complexity with increased scale is
subjective. However, it appears that as we look at scaling up
from a centralized system to a distributed system or system of
systems, it may be easier to implement some security
mechanisms because physical separation can provide some
enforcement. However, this enforcement is not sufficient for a
complete security policy. Distribution appears to add risk,
which increases complexity and is not scalable. In general,
increased scale brings increased risk.

It was noted that TCB techniques do not seem to scale upward.
Meeting applications assurance requirements become too
expensive, so we need new assurance techniques that can handle
aggregates of distributed data. To find these new mechanisms,
we must consider whether access mediation is imposed at the
correct level in an architecture. In scaling up for size and
complexity, we may need to place protection mechanisms at
different levels and apply additional protection mechanisms
once a coarse access mediation decision has been taken.

Another possible solution is to increase the security
perimeter. This topic is discussed as part of the question
addressed in Section 5.4. However, we are beginning to
recognize that we cannot afford distributed TCSEC solutions,
so we must begin to look at other approaches.


5.4  ARE WE FOCUSED TOO MUCH ON OPERATING SYSTEM SECURITY?
DO WE NEED TRUSTED APPLICATIONS?

5.4.1     Focus on the Operating System

Distributed systems have fundamental problems with some of the
features that are required by the TCSEC, for example, trusted
path. The communications protocols in use today do not support
these kinds of features. On the other hand, no product TCB is
free of covert channels, although some products now coming on
the market claim this distinction. Covert channels have been
found in all products having a TCB, even high-assurance
products. Covert channels introduce a vulnerability that can
be exploited to violate the security policy. Whether to guard
against the exploitation of this vulnerability for a given
environment is a risk management decision. However, when we
move to a distributed computing environment, covert channel
vulnerability offers a much richer opportunity with a lower
probability of detection for gaining unauthorized access to
sensitive information. Access to real threat information can
perhaps provide pragmatic guidance for the real risk that
covert channel vulnerability poses for the compromise of
sensitive information.

Work is being done in maintaining security across multiple
domains. European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA)
Standard ECMA-138 (ECMA, 1989), which addresses the
propagation of security policies across domains, was suggested
as a useful reference document. With these types of problems
in mind, it became obvious that we need to find ways to make
security architectures work for and not against us.

Distribution adds both difficulty and complexity to the
security problem. As noted previously, we must be able to
enforce security policies such as integrity, availability, and
safety as well as the traditional policies of confidentiality.
Using the security infrastructure commercially available today
as a consequence of National Security Agency (NSA) support for
evaluated security products, it has not yet become practical
to construct a modular architecture from the building blocks
provided by these evaluated security products. An
architectural methodology would permit the development and
combination of these logical building blocks to support all of
these security policies, as well as the support of distributed
functionality.

New security paradigms must provide services that support
enforcement of these policies. These services are the logical
building blocks just mentioned. Examples of these services
include data abstraction, layered security services, and
refinement support. These services were applied to the THETA
system (McEnerney, et al., 1990).

Data abstraction is an important software engineering
technique for developing quality modular software. It allows
assurance claims to be made that trusted software has a
limited impact and hence does not violate the system security
policy. It can be used to demonstrate domain isolation and
show if new covert channels have been introduced. Data
abstraction can also be used to enforce fine-grained access
control policies with richer access semantics.

Making security services available to trusted applications
when they are needed can be far more effective than providing
the service as part of a centralized TCB. These security
services can be designed, implemented, evaluated, and stored
in a repository. A trusted application uses only those
services needed for the application. Examples of these layered
security services include mandatory access control (MAC)
checks, audit, trusted path, and scheduling.

Refinement support to some extent depends on data abstraction
and the availability of layered security services. A trusted
application may require a finer grained access control
mechanism that can be enforced using data abstraction and a
MAC check. The assurance argument is facilitated by
demonstrating that the application code satisfies the
conventions of the layered security services it uses, and that
the code enforces the application-specific security policy.

5.4.2     Trust in Applications

We can gain assurance about security policies other than
confidentiality if we trust some applications. By extending
trust in selected applications, we gain enough assurance to
permit the use of lower assurance systems in environments
where other guidance, such as the Yellow Books, may establish
a requirement for higher assurance systems. We gain this
assurance in the following way. Some security enforcement
mechanisms can be implemented in trusted applications. If we
place a few restraints on those applications, we can have
assurance that this trust is warranted.

The primary restriction is that the application must be
trusted not to behave maliciously. We must have assurance that
trusted applications do not exploit covert channels, subvert
accountability mechanisms, or corrupt information that is
processed by the application. These trusted applications
become extensions of the TCB. In turn, the TCB must ensure
that these applications are not bypassed, are tamperproof, and
must provide a trusted path from the application to the user.

There are several proposed methods for gaining assurance that
an application is not malicious. One method advocated by John
McDermid is a trilateral plan for using professional people,
code inspection and analysis, and testing (McDermid, 1991).
Others advocate gaining assurance through the pedigree of the
investigator, his/her organizational allegiance, or the
reputation of the tools used to examine the software. Pedigree
was addressed as a separate workshop topic (see Section 4). By
gaining assurance in this way, even medium-assurance TCBs with
trusted applications can be used in place of high-assurance
systems.

Although some distributed system examples were presented, most
of the discussion focused on trusted applications running on
special-purpose OSs and the sometimes contradictory nature of
policy objectives from different security domains. Issues of
securely sharing information among autonomous systems, the
atomicity of user-generated transactions, the secure handling
of congestion among trusted systems, the proliferation of
covert channels, and secure recovery in a distributed
subscriber information infrastructure environment were not
discussed at length, but remain important topics for further
investigation.


5.5  HOW CAN SECURITY ARCHITECTURES EASE ASSURANCE
ARGUMENTS?

While this question was not explicitly discussed, it was
recognized that part of the response to the question addressed
in Section 5.4 included this subject. Additionally, if we can
separate the assurance problem into smaller, more manageable
components, we can reason about these components with more
confidence. Defining rules for composing the assurance for
these components into assurance for the larger whole is an
area of ongoing research. System- or infrastructure-level
refinement techniques for allocating requirements as well as
assurance objectives also requires further investigation.

Some efforts in DOD address assurance by certification and
accreditation of the information infrastructure. The common
approach is to define a flexible security architecture that
allows individual systems to connect in well-defined ways and
constrains the risk and the role that a given system plays
within the infrastructure. By defining connection rules, a
system's security posture can be protected against
perturbations elsewhere in the infrastructure. Only when a
system's own security configuration changes does the security
posture of the system itself need to be reassessed. This
approach makes security management tractable from the system
perspective. However, deriving a security architecture in the
large, and reasoning about its assurance and protection
effectiveness remains a problem for future investigation.


5.6  CAN SOME SECURITY ARCHITECTURES ALLOW INTEGRATION OF
NEW TECHNOLOGIES, SUPPORT MORE SECURE USE OF LEGACY
SYSTEMS, AND PROMOTE ASSURANCE?

5.6.1     New Technologies and Legacy Systems

In light of the current migration away from legacy mainframe
systems toward distributed computing environments, legacy
systems require some special consideration. This migration
will occur slowly because resources are not readily available.

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has used physical
separation, distribution, and replication with a high-
assurance product in a prototype system called the Secure
Information Through Replicated Architecture (SINTRA) project.
A trusted front end mediates access between users logged in at
different security levels to databases at their respective
login level. Each database contains information appropriate to
the login level as well as copies of all lower level
information. Users can retrieve information with high
assurance and little security overhead. However, when a user
updates a low-level database, the update must be securely and
consistently propagated to all higher level backend databases.

Most of the research effort for the SINTRA project has been
focused on the development of a correct replica-control
algorithm for the consistent replication of data, while
providing secure, concurrent access to users operating at
different levels. Several such algorithms were developed as
part of this effort. The algorithm currently implemented is
untrusted, and it does not require changes to the commercial
database management system running on back end processors. A
proof-of-concept prototype has been implemented and
demonstrated that high assurance and good performance are not
mutually exclusive.

This pragmatic approach to security offers strong security
protection, high assurance, good performance, full relational
database capabilities, and the ability to incorporate new
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Structured Query
Language (SQL) compliant technology. If we can define what a
transaction does in a legacy system and what an update
implies, the replicated architecture approach can support high-
assurance distribution of legacy systems. Likewise, this
approach can be used to provide an MLS capability for new
technologies such as object-oriented databases, extended
relational databases, and expert systems.

In a similar spirit, other pragmatic security mechanisms can
be used. In addition to enforcing a confidentiality policy,
some form of cryptographic checksum can be used to ensure that
information has not been inadvertently or maliciously changed.
Intrusion-tolerant mechanisms can be used to thwart the
efforts of an intruder and to increase the work factor needed
for gaining access to sensitive information. This is an
attractive approach for protecting databases against
unauthorized access.

5.6.2     Administration of Distributed Security

The discussion addressed the administration of distributed
systems. The example was the AEGIS system. In this distributed
system, processes can be started on a given hardware platform
but can be moved to other platforms to maintain system
availability. In this example system, the security policy
enforcement mechanisms must also move from platform to
platform in a transparent but highly dynamic manner. This
physical separation and mobile security enforcement introduce
new security problems.

It is worth noting that on a different level, the management
of security across distributed hardware becomes significantly
more complex than for a traditional single-processor system.
Besides complex issues of synchronizing user names and
passwords, hardware-naming conventions, and coordinating audit
on-and-off switches, there are major problems with the
collection and analysis of audit information. Today's
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) tools meet very few of these
security needs.

One aspect of distributed system security that has not
received much study is that of multiple identities. Each of us
has several identities. These identities might include:

  y   Joe Sixpack, a commercial network customer
  
  y   Joe, a government employee using the Internet at work
  
  y   Joe, the office computer-system's database administrator
  
  y   Joe, the Parent Teachers Association volunteer at the
      local school tutoring students in computer skills

For each of these roles, Joe might have a different user name
and password. The capability for Joe to access his own files,
regardless of his active Internet identity, is problematic.
The most straightforward solution is for Joe's access to be
determined based on the role for which he is currently
authorized. A metapolicy may require that only one role at a
time must be active, although this requirement could be very
difficult to enforce. This requirement would prevent the
following violation of the least privilege policy: in an
extreme case, Joe could attempt to satisfy a two-man rule and
being both of the required people by simultaneously using two
of his user names. Writing a security policy that covers this
situation is extremely difficult. Implementing it could be
even more difficult. The challenge is to create such a
security policy without embedding a solution into the
architecture or building a solution into the criteria. These
problems illustrate the complexity and conflicts that can
arise in the enforcement of multiple policies.


5.7  CAN DIFFERENT SECURITY ARCHITECTURES ALLOW USERS MORE
EFFECTIVE ACCESS TO THEIR DATA?

Due to time constraints, this question was not addressed.


5.8  CONCLUSIONS

It was agreed that there is a need to go beyond the TCSEC
because this document is not based on the right questions for
the new computing world of today. Solutions must be based on
understanding the damage that could result from compromise,
including confidentiality, availability, integrity, and
authenticity compromises; the threats that could cause
compromise; and the countermeasures that are effective in
protecting data against these threats.

We previously asked "How do we identify the new rules and
criteria? Do we allow customer agencies to set their own
requirements?" Protection profiles can be used to describe the
needs of a particular industry or industry segment. However,
there is a pressing need for at least a few of these industry
segments to create protection profiles. The first published
profiles will greatly contribute to the understanding of user
security needs in a distributed environment and to preliminary
determinations of which functions need automation.

Recalling our original challenges as stated in the JSC Report,
it is essential that the information security (INFOSEC)
community must begin to study these problems from the
subscriber's point of view. The subscriber will access
information from a vast collection of heterogeneous data
sources. As our dependence on increasingly greater amounts and
varieties of information grows, our ability to manage,
manipulate, and protect information becomes more critical. We
must be able to ensure that changes made to related
information result in consistent information and that
consistency is preserved even when some components fail. These
observations lead us to conclude that the effects of a
subscriber's input request, or transaction, either become
permanent within the distributed computing environment or that
no effects of the transaction persist. Hence, the transaction
becomes the control abstraction for a distributed computing
environment. This concept enables us to build upon the INFOSEC
infrastructure and discipline that have been developed over
the past two decades.

Security decisions must be made that ease the transaction
management problem for distributed, heterogeneous information
sources. If a subscriber's access must be mediated over some
collection of MLS stovepipe application systems, we must
impose MLS and application-specific constraints on an already
difficult transaction management problem. The challenge for
the INFOSEC community is to initiate investigations that lead
to a better appreciation of distributed computing environment
problems and to provide guidance that makes solutions in the
large more possible.

We must appreciate that the transition to a subscriber-
information infrastructure computing environment presents as
many opportunities as challenges for INFOSEC solutions.
Stovepipe MLS solutions have focused on constraints and
restrictions. Application of security measures in the large
can provide authorized users with secure, reliable access to
all the information they need to do their jobs.

                           SECTION 6
                               
                            PROCESS
                               
                               
                     Joel Sachs, Moderator
                   Caralyn Wichers, Recorder
                               
                               
6.1  INTRODUCTION

Background information is presented to both aid in
understanding and to provide some context.  This information
is based on the moderator's presentation. Process was defined
as the set of practices, methods, and transformations that
integrate managers and engineers in using technology to attain
an end-result.  The fundamental challenge to organizations
today is to develop quality results, both reliably and
predictably.  Key leverage points are people, technology, and
process.  Unfortunately, the role of process has been given
minimal attention to date.

The session discussed the fact that many interrelated
processes exist today; these may be formally stated or
conducted in default.  Major process areas include:
acquisition, integration, development, product evaluation,
system certification, and system accreditation.  The names for
these process areas may differ among the military, civil
government, and private sectors, but the basic notions are
universally applicable.  DOD-oriented terms are used
throughout this section.

Specialty processes relate to specific disciplines such as
systems engineering, software engineering, hardware
engineering, test engineering, security engineering and its
associated process, operating systems, and accepting risks.
Some disciplines cut across the major process and as a result,
one can view either a specialty process within a major process
or one that branches across them.  While a single integrated
process sounds attractive, it most likely would be too
complex, too high-level, and ineffective.  Managing multiple
processes in concert is the challenge of concurrent
engineering management today.

Processes can be thought of as branching across or constrained
within life-cycle phases.  Regardless of development approach,
system/product projects go through concept definition, design,
implementation, and testing in some form or another.  Today
several development approaches are in use or under
consideration.  These include evolutionary acquisition,
incremental build, prototyping, and "classic" waterfall.
Equally important is considering whether a system/product is
built from scratch, re-engineered, integrated from 100% COTS,
or integrated with developed applications.

The term process can connote many different things, including:
process definition, process description, process (activity)
prescription, process practice, process enactment, process
improvement, and process measurements.  Directly related to
the process measurement is capability assessment and
capability models to perform such assessments.


6.2  MAIN CONCEPTS DISCUSSED

6.2.1     Why Focus on Process

There are a number of reasons to emphasize process today.  We
observe that systems and products apparently will continue to
increase in size and complexity.  In addition, they will
transition through various versions and releases, most likely
more rapidly.  Their use, environment, and re-use will evolve.
Single entity systems will become more a part of an
infrastructure, which will become more a part of a National
Information Infrastructure (NII) or Defense Information
Infrastructure, which become more a part of a Global
Information Infrastructure.  Such demands and timeliness will
necessitate more reliance on the actual engineering of the
products and systems that comprise these and, in particular, a
need for reliable security engineering to be conducted
constantly.  Process improvement and assurance are critical to
such a need and perhaps the only feasible solution.

Focus on process focus introduces the possibility for
scalability, knowledge evolution, and improvement.  Such focus
will help predict and guarantee predictable outcomes, trends,
and characteristics.  In addition, it will concentrate
investments to enhance and perform quality and effective
security engineering.

6.2.2     Reliance on Process

One part of the discussion focused on the relationship between
the process and the amount of assurance provided by a
system/product.  An interesting point was realized in asking
the question: To which process are we referring?  Some said
the process for building something, whereas others mentioned
the process for assessing something.  The process for
operating the system/product may also support the ability to
determine assurance.  These may be fundamentally different
assurances or may be different ingredients to a single notion
of assurance.

Before one can agree on a uniform process for determining an
appropriate amount of desired assurance and the ability to
measure assurance, a common dictionary for customers to use is
really necessary so everyone can communicate effectively and
consistently.  We need to specify what is desired, not how it
is implemented.

Another part of the discussion focused the benefits in using a
uniform process.  Uniformity, both within an organization and
across organizations, provides some increased confidence that
a particular process is employed properly.  Moreover,
uniformity in process may lead to improved evidence.

The following additional points/questions were made regarding
uniform process and reliance on process:

  y   Running a set of conformance tests do not adequately
      assure a system/product as testing cannot be complete or
      comprehensive, hence process must address more than just
      testing.
  
  y   There is a difference between the individuals or
      organization qualifications to certify/evaluate versus
      responsibility for certifying/evaluating.
  
  y   While a process is being followed uniformly, there will
      be pressures to deviate from it, for example from the
      accreditor, PMO, integration PM, etc.,  findings will
      need to account for adjustments in the process.
  
  y   To what extent should a security knowledgeable
      individual be involved in the process in order to be
      able to address the security issues?
  
  y   How can we ensure that the evidence will provide
      assurance when needed during the process?
  
  y   How can tools help?

6.2.3     Measurement and Assurance of Process

Documenting a process is an insufficient way to conclude that
the process is followed.  It is not only critical to know that
a process is being followed, but also to know how well is it
followed and how sophisticated is it.  Hence, there is a need
to measure and assess the quality and degree of process
adherence within an organization.

Three major security-related processes and their execution:

  y   The engineering process defines the security
      requirements, develops a security architecture and
      design, conducts security testing, and collects and
      presents evidence about the system/product (usually
      executed by the engineering organization, typically a
      system integrator/developer or product (vendor
      engineering group).
  
  y   The assessment process examines the evidence on the
      system/product and the activities of the engineering
      organization (usually executed by a system certification
      or product evaluation organization).
  
  y   The accreditation process accepts and approves the
      operational risks associated with the use of a system
      and its inherent weaknesses (usually executed by the
      accreditor).

One process model discussed was the Security Engineering
Capability Maturity Model (SE CMM).  This model focuses on the
development engineering activities which are security specific
and their interface to other areas, e.g., evaluation,
certification, acquisition, and quality assurance.  It views
security engineering as an engineering discipline conducted
concurrently with other disciplines, e.g., systems
engineering, software engineering, hardware engineering, and
test engineering. The overall result is confidence in the
organization's process and their adherence to it.

The following additional points/questions were made regarding
measurement and assurance of the process:

  y   What minimal things do you need to do to make sure the
      process is applied and followed?
  
  y   With what initial set of things does a security
      engineering process need to start, e.g., threats, risks,
      mainstream vulnerabilities, etc.?
  
  y   Process, technology and people will change.
  
  y   How does a risk manager/taker rely on process assurance?
  
  y   How should other key processes be addressed, e.g.,
      product evaluation, system certification, system
      accreditation, system acquisition?

6.2.4     Understanding Assurance and Its Ingredients

An assurance taxonomy was introduced to aid in discussing and
understanding assurance.  The elements of the taxonomy are:
the target, the method, and the benefit of the assurance.  The
target needs to be considered both in terms of the explicit
(immediate) target and the (ultimate) end target.  Three
aspects are important regarding method, namely the production
method, the assessment method, and the results representation.
Benefit needs to be thought of relative to direct benefit and
indirect benefit.

Various aspects of assurance were discussed throughout the
session.  These included seeing assurance in terms of
attributes, degrees, and ingredients.  The attributes
discussed covered correctness (strength of mechanism and
quality of their implementation), effectiveness (how well
mechanisms do their job), workmanship (quality of development
and overall quality of end result), and usability.  The
possibility for other attributes was acknowledged.

Concerning degree of assurance, it is necessary to recognize
that assurance is a continuum. Potential ingredients to
establishing degree of assurance could include functionality
and engineering, quality control, and assessor process and
evidence.

Many of the elements of the taxonomy can be seen as
independent of each other.  However, it was clear from the
discussions that the real interrelationships of them is
unknown.  Moreover, how to establish and express the type and
degree of assurance needed is not really available today.
Current practices are weak.  The degree of structure required
to address them was not clear.  All of this is further
complicated since risk management is interwoven with politics.
A suggestion was made to examine the taxonomy in terms of the
true added value of the evidence and the assurance.  These may
imply that multiple types (representative forms) of assurance,
ratings, and evidences are needed to satisfy multiple types of
consumers.

The following additional points/questions were made regarding
understanding assurance and its ingredients:

  y   Depending on the type of the assurance requirements
      needed, the attributes of the assurance for the process
      may be quite different.
  
  y   The user of information technology (IT) security should
      decide what the needed evidence is to make the product
      considered enough of assurance.
  
  y   Levels of evidence are different and need to be
      considered, i.e., incorporated into an accepted model.
      Examples include reputation, warranty, third-party
      evaluations, industry or consortium branding, and wide-
      spread use.
  
  y   Effectiveness, correctness, and risks are different for
      systems than products, particularly what they mean and
      how important they are.
  
  y   How should subsequent discovered bugs and problems be
      handled and how should they affect one's view of
      previously established assurance or assurance ratings?
  
  y   Assurance can be seen as based on the composition of a
      variety of evidences.

6.2.5     Relating Process to Assurance

Clearly a relationship between process, evidence, and
assurance exists.  Today assurance is predominantly determined
by the product evaluator's process or the system certifier's
process for products and systems, respectively.  Also today
the developer's process (whether a product or
integrator/developer engineering group) contributes directly
to the creation of evidence to be used in an assurance
determination.   Therefore, higher quality and improvements to
these processes can result in cheaper, faster, better, more
predictable assurance.

The following additional points/questions were made regarding
relating process to assurance:

  y   With a high quality process(es), the amount of
      system/product specific evidence can be greatly reduced.
  
  y   Process-produced evidence needs to include
      effectiveness.
  
  y   Is the assurance statement related to the work factor,
      i.e., degree of effort?  If the work factor is large
      then is assurance improved?
  
  y   There is a need to determine how the process can
      generate the evidence required by the customer then
      determine.
  
  y   Variations must be allowed in the specific practices of
      a process (i.e., instantiation and implementation).
  
  y   In reality, there will be cases where a product is
      developed without following a defined process and these
      cases cannot be ignored, i.e., will need to be accounted
      for.

6.2.6     PROCESS ASSURANCE AS A BASIS OF SYSTEM/PRODUCT
ASSURANCE

The discussion at the session centered around the extent that
assurances about process could contribute to assurance about
the system/product.  As stated above, clearly process
contributes to evidence upon which classic assurance is
determined.  It should be equally clear that assurance about a
relevant process, e.g., the developer's security engineering
process, can also contribute to the evidence.  For example,
such assurance would indicate a degree of confidence in the
evidence contributions produced by the process.

One could argue that today's system and product assurance are
based on assurance of the product evaluator's and system
certifier's processes, respectively.  The assurance on each
process is a forgone conclusion offered by its practitioner.
Moreover, these process assurances are usually quite accepted
by the consumers, accreditors, developers, and users.

The most challenging question is whether one could rely on
developer's security engineering process assurance as the sole
or predominant determinant of system/product assurance.
Almost all of the attendees felt that relying on a good
process alone to achieve an amount of assurance isn't
adequate.  For instance, testing would still be needed to
ensure that process is followed before, during, and after the
system/product is made.  Total dependence on the process is
not enough, because there may be errors and such dependence
appears naive.  The SE CMM was viewed as a promising method
(and criteria) for establishing security engineering process
assurance.

The following additional points/questions were made regarding
relating process to assurance:
  
  y   Process assurance may be adequate to be the sole
      determinant of system/product assurance.
  
  y   Comparisons and equivalencies of various blends of
      developer process assurance and system/product evidence
      to establish system/product evidence are needed.
  
  y   The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) CMM for
      Software, while providing assurance on software
      engineering management, does not address security.
  
  y   ISO 9000 fundamentally requires the developer to have a
      documented process; it does not give any details or
      criteria.

6.2.7     Process Improvement

System security engineering organizations currently have
differences in the maturity of the processes that they follow.
Immature organizations tend to use processes which typically
do not provide a great deal of visibility into the progress
and quality of the system/product being built.  These
processes are indicative of unpredictable performance and lead
to excessive maintenance costs.

The SE CMM identifies key process areas and provides the
ability to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the
process.  Existing relationships between the key process areas
are utilized.  It provides an approach to improve the process
for building a system/product.  This is done by identifying
incremental improvements and focusing investments in training,
tools, and process development.

The group basically agreed that if the process to build the
system/product can be improved, then the product will be
improved, and therefore reducing the amount of required
system/product specific evidence.  To improve the process of
gaining assurance in a system/product we need to identify the
processes that mitigate the risk and relate them to the
process that develops the system/product.  After you define
those processes you need to differentiate the kinds of
assurances related.

The following additional points/questions were made regarding
process improvement:
  
  y   How much evidence will be needed for illustrating that
      you follow a particular process?
  
  y   How much additional evidence above and beyond following
      a particular process is required to indicate a
      sufficient amount of assurance?
  
  y   What is the cost of improving the process?
  
  y   What is the cost associated with evaluating the
      additional evidence?
  
  y   What are the relationships between the risk and methods
      used to counter the risks?
  
  y   How can we disassemble threat and the relationship of
      the process?
  
  y   How can tools help?


6.3  CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Clearly movement to a process orientation for engineering,
systems, and products is a necessity.  Integral to such a
movement is a commitment to continuous organizational process
improvement, where slow incremental organizational process
improvement is key.  Such notions can apply equally to
processes for security engineering (system or product),
product evaluation, system certification, system
accreditation, acquisition, and system administration.

Improved and uniform process(es) may lead to higher quality
and more predictable evidence and, hence, better, faster,
cheaper assurance.  Process assurance will likewise aid in
this direction.  Hopefully, process assurance will permit a
reliance on process as the predominant determinant of
system/product assurance, perhaps even the sole determinant.

Such reliance will need to be investigated, resolved by
analysis, trail, or a combination thereof.  The various
questions and issues merit investigation:

  y   A better (practical, usable) definition of assurance
      with more robust taxonomy that addresses assurance
      attributes, ingredients, and forms that differentiates
      assurance purpose and degree.
  
  y   Understanding of the trade-offs and the translation of
      them to equivalency classes; these must address trade-
      offs among security functionality development process,
      assurance process, and evidence dimensions.
  
  y   Development of the SE CMM and its use in security
      engineering process improvement, assurance, and
      standardization.
  
  y   Addressing other processes in terms of process
      standardization, improvement, and confidence.
  
  y   Addressing process related issues, such as individual
      skills, process descriptions, and process prescriptions.
                           SECTION 7
                               
                      METRICS AND TESTING
                               
                               
                    Jim Williams, Moderator
                   Caralyn Wichers, Recorder
                               
                               
7.1  INTRODUCTION

"What is assurance?" Without a working definition of
assurance, it is difficult to describe how to measure
assurance. An appropriate definition of assurance depends, in
turn, on the rationale for assurance.

Participants in this session discussed definitions and purpose
assurance, how it can be measured, both qualitatively and
quantitatively, and how testing, including automated testing,
fits into assurance.


7.2  BACKGROUND

The following relevant findings can be found in Redefining
Security (JSC, 1994). A balanced mix of information systems
security, personnel security, and physical security is needed,
but how does one make sure that an appropriate mix is
achieved? A complete range of security objectives needs to be
addressed, including confidentiality, availability, integrity,
and security management, but do assurance techniques designed
for confidentiality necessarily carry over to other
objectives?

The Federal Criteria (National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) and NSA, 1992) provides a view of security
in terms of a basic problem decomposition into task areas,
most of which constitute assurance of some sort (those that do
not are italicized):

  y   Product functionality
  y   Environment/usage
  y   Product cycle (design, development, evaluation,
      maintenance)
  y   Vetting of the above requirements
  y   Product integration
  y   System certification
  y   System accreditation

The Federal Criteria itself addressed only the first four
items.


7.3  RATIONALE FOR ASSURANCE

The primary reasons for providing assurance include the
following:

  y   Reduce threats to information assets, safety of physical
      systems, data sources and recipients, and users.
  
  y   Reduce losses induced by active threat agents, natural
      disasters, faulty software, incompatible system
      components, inadvertent "agents," and expenditures on
      security protection.
     
There was some discussion as to whether the goal of achieving
acceptable security could be understood in terms of the cost
of security, including indirect costs such as inconvenience to
users and security breaches.

Reducing concepts to dollars may encourage cynicism, such as
determining what a secret is worth and who cares, rather than
foster making a meaningful decision. However, to achieve any
assurance, one must spend money. Even in building a system
without explicit security requirements, one still wants to
test and show that the system works. Depending on the level of
assurance needed, one may want to spend more to obtain it. In
some cases, one may want to spend a lot for assurance because
one may care about saving lives, for example. In others, any
additional expense on a particular security objective, such as
confidentiality, may be wasted on the product's intended
customers.

There must be requirements for measuring the cost of security.
Without these requirements, there is no empirical basis for
measuring the payoffs from using various assurance techniques.
Unfortunately, we do not often learn from the past whether or
not assurance techniques were successful. Based on
unsuccessful efforts to elicit the voluntary production of
cost-benefit information, it appears that if there is no
requirement to record the information, then the vendor will
not record it. We need to capture information, for instance,
on how long it really takes to test and how this testing
correlates with how much assurance is obtained as a result. We
need, for example, to obtain information on security tradeoffs
between testing prototypes and testing actual systems.
Currently, testers ask how much money is involved and how long
testing will take, but not how this testing will correlate
with likelihood of meeting user security needs.


7.4  DEFINITION AND PURPOSE OF ASSURANCE

The following primary and secondary definitions were developed
based on a managed brainstorming session conducted using a
Juran tool.

  y   Assurance is confidence that a system meets the security
      needs of those whom it was intended to serve.4 Thus, the
      purpose of assurance is to mitigate risk that security
      needs will not be met.

  y   Confidence, in this case, varies from an informal
      belief, comfort level, or sense of well being to
      rigorous, statistically valid measures of probability of
      truth. It is difficult to see how meaningful
      quantitative measures of confidence can be obtained
      without resorting to rigorous statistical notions of
      confidence. For many people, confidence implies
      substantiating knowledge of how the belief was obtained,
  by employing of a precise, rigorous analysis of system
      behavior, having confidence in the people who perform
      the analysis, supplying substantiating evidence.
      Confidence depends on individual perspective; there is
      usually some loss of confidence as assurance information
      is transferred from producers of this information to its
      consumers.

  y   A system is made up of automated information products,
      users, and other interacting entities. This fact leads
      to distinctions among automated system assurance,
      product assurance, and personnel assurance.
  
  y   Meeting security needs presupposes the full and correct
      identification of security needs. Thus, assurance
      necessarily includes validating the correctness and
      completeness of identified security needs. Moreover, the
      needed degree of assurance depends directly on the
      expected cost of failing to meet these needs. Cost is
      not always measurable in monetary terms. Meeting
      security needs also involves the proper design and
      implementation of systems. The overall system design
      process includes formulation of automated system
      requirements as well as usage and environmental
      constraints. Consequently, assurance involves ensuring
      that the overall design effectively addresses the needs
      of the users and owners of the system. The overall
      structure, or design of a system, is something that
      exists throughout its life cycle. Assurance of
      effectiveness is needed continuously throughout the
      entire evolution of the system.

  y   The overall security design must also be correctly
      implemented. Automated components must perform as
      specified, which implies not doing things that are
      prohibited by the design's security requirements.
      Moreover, constraints on the use of the system must be
      reasonable and must be explained to its users and
      administrators who, in turn, must have sufficient
      incentives to obey these constraints. Assurance of
      correctness must also be provided continuously
      throughout a system's life cycle.


7.5  KINDS OF ASSURANCE

The above discussion on the purpose and definition of
assurance implies directly that security assurance includes
the following kinds of assurance:

Policy assurance involves the identification, assessment, and
validation of security needs, as well as estimation of the
(possibly non-monetary) cost of failing to meet these needs.
This form of assurance requires empirical data on security
incidents. Like other forms of assurance, this form must take
place throughout the system's life cycle because relevant
empirical data is generated throughout the system's life cycle
and because security needs evolve in parallel with those of
the system.

Effectiveness assurance ensures the effectiveness of the
overall system and component designs, including the design of
environmental/usage constraints, throughout their entire life
cycle. Effectiveness, in the ITSEC at least, is the aptitude
of the security functions to properly counter the postulated
threats. Effectiveness includes suitability and strength of
mechanisms. The FC adds adequacy, completeness, binding, and
dependency analysis.

Correctness assurance ensures that designs are correctly
implemented throughout their entire life cycle. Correct
implementation refers to agreement between implementation and
specification.

Evaluation assurance provides evidence as to whether policy,
effectiveness, and correctness assurance is adequate.
Successful evaluation involves expert examination of evidence
pertaining to policy appropriateness, design effectiveness,
and implementation correctness.

Pragmatically, the above decomposition of the assurance
problem requires an appropriate, balanced allocation of
assurance effort among various kinds of assurance, among
system components, including human components, and among
various assurance techniques, throughout the system's life
cycle. Balance presupposes the identification of all readily
available sources of assurance and assurance evidence. The
need for allocation of assurance throughout product and system
life cycles is a strong motivation for emphasizing reusable
assurance evidence. Our discussion did not devise a name for
this process, but for ease of later reference in this
document, we will refer to it as ensuring balance.

For all kinds of assurance, including ensuring balance, the
amount of assurance actually provided depends heavily on the
expertise of the people and organizations involved; it is
positively, perhaps strongly, correlated with their
reputations. Consequently, reputation may be a useful,
convenient form of evidence for evaluating all kinds of
assurance. For the same reason, willingness to accept
responsibility (including legal responsibility) for error is
also positively correlated and is thus useful as evidence. In
particular, vendor product warranties may constitute evidence
of correctly implemented, effective product designs.

All of the various kinds of assurance can fail. Security
incidents will happen, and thus assurance will be improved if
response to breakage is planned for, especially in regard to
the maintenance of policies, systems, and the products from
which systems are built.


7.6  ASSURANCE TECHNIQUES

The following subsections discuss in more detail the above
five kinds of assurance, along with related assurance
techniques. This list of techniques produced during the
discussion is clearly incomplete. The apparent absence of
techniques for some forms and aspects of assurance may be a
significant observation or simply a result of the brevity of
our investigation.

7.6.1     Policy Assurance

Policy assurance, as it applies to information security,
appears to be an under-explored area. Other similar
disciplines, such as industrial safety and physical security,
have a stronger tradition of collecting, analyzing, and
profiting from incident data, both real-world and experimental
data.

7.6.2     Effectiveness and Correctness Assurance

There is a large body of knowledge and assumed wisdom about
how to achieve high quality design, implementation, and
systems integration. We did not discuss this topic in detail.
However, product and automated system development necessarily
includes developer evaluation, so that the evaluation
techniques mentioned below apply here as well. Moreover, the
overall value of a development technique may include not only
intrinsic value to the product or system produced but
evidentiary value for evaluation.

Assurance in the design and implementation of environment and
usage constraints was touched on only briefly, and less
appears to be known than originally thought. Techniques
include screening/training users and product integrators as
well as redesigning products and systems to make them as idiot
proof as possible.

7.6.3     Evaluation Assurance

Available evaluation assurance techniques include, but are not
limited to, the following:

  y   Direct, rigorous analysis of product or system behavior
  
  y   Use of formal methods. such as specifications and
      correctness proofs
  
  y   Covert channel analysis (mention of this drew protest on
      grounds of practicality)
  
  y   Penetration testing
  
  y   Functional testing (including beta testing)
  
  y   Assessment of developer competence and/or methodology
  
  y   Assessment of developer reputation
  
  y   Assessment of development tools (e.g., for design
      analysis, configuration management, automated testing)
  
  y   Assessment of user experience
  
  y   Avoidance of using the first version of a system, which
      usually involves field testing and evaluation

7.6.4     Ensuring Balance

Assurance techniques often tend to apply to perceived-threat
scenarios, focusing on what might go wrong. The assurance
approach for a given system or product family needs to be
subjected to threat-mitigation or risk-reduction analyses.

Unfortunately, there is a dirth of relevant information here.
For example, there is no clear way to authoritatively answer
such obvious questions as the following:

  y   For what environments would money spent on covert
      channel analysis have been better spent on configuration
      management?
  
  y   Is having an NSA A1 evaluation better than being a COTS
      product?


7.7  WHERE TESTING FITS IN

Evaluators tend to test what the developers do. If tests
performed by the developers were correct and complete, perhaps
the evaluators could just check the results.

There are a few areas in which exhaustive testing is already
being used, one of which is model checking of hardware. For
portions of systems that can be specified in terms of
propositional logic, it is feasible to set up binary decision
trees to check all paths. This is common practice for testing
of hardware; these tests are fully automated.

Security testing traditionally includes penetration testing,
which is difficult to automate because it involves long,
unusual scenarios. Penetration testing is based on the
assumption that the system will have hostile users whose
patterns of input are explicitly designed to exploit system
vulnerabilities. Traditional testing theory requires that test
cases be distributed in the same way as input in actual system
operation. Unfortunately, input patterns by hostile users can
change when vulnerabilities are discovered_in ways that cannot
be predicted during routine testing. There are tools that help
with penetration testing, but full automation seems
infeasible.

7.7.1     Where Automated Testing Fits In

Fully automated testing involves constructing machine-readable
specifications that describe both system behavior and expected
user inputs, automated generation of test cases from the
specifications, automated execution of test cases by test
harnesses, and automated analysis of test results by test
servers.

Automated test generation involves additional expense because
of the need to write machine-readable specifications. However,
automated test generation may be very cost-effective when the
following statements are true:

  y   Economies of scale are realized
  
      -  A single design has many different implementations

  y   Assurance requirements call for
  
      -  Systematic or exhaustive testing
      -  Independent validation of vendor test results
      -  Machine-readable specifications

  y   Automated test execution is required for other reasons

  y   Test-generation tools can develop new test suites
      quickly for
  
      -  Design revisions
      -  New test requirements
      -  New implementations

To what extent does automated testing support evaluation?
Unconstrained searching for vulnerabilities is a good thing to
do but it is not clear if this is feasible via automated
testing, if hostile users are assumed to exist. However,
automated regression testing can be used to ensure that known
security flaws do not reappear after having been removed.


7.8  CONCLUSIONS

Several useful sources of assurance have been underutilized in
the past. More cost-effective approaches depend on
understanding how these sources can be best used. In this
session, we have posed tentative answers to all but the last
of the following questions:

  y   What is the higher goal that security assurance
      supports?
  
  y   How does assurance fit in?
  
  y   What is assurance?
  
  y   How does (automated) testing fit in?
  
  y   How can assurance be achieved and measured?

These answers and the final question need to be discussed by
the larger security community, possibly at NIST's
International Invitational Workshop on Developmental
Assurance, to be held in June 1994.

Finally, we have identified a preliminary taxonomy of
assurance elements and techniques. This taxonomy pertains to
the difficult questions of how to achieve practical assurance
levels and how to measure, either qualitatively or
quantitatively, the amount of assurance provided for a product
or system. It was the consensus of the discussion group that
qualitative measurements of assurance are currently more
feasible than quantitative measurements.
                           SECTION 8
                               
                        RISK MANAGEMENT
                               
                               
                  Marshall Abrams, Moderator
                    Lynne Ambuel, Recorder


8.1  INTRODUCTION

The challenges of risk management are divided into equally
demanding and sometimes conflicting requirements concerning
data integrity, system integrity, availability, software
reliability, safety, and confidentially. Accepting a risk
management perspective, we cannot pretend that by implementing
certain security measures, we can mitigate the security risk
to zero. Viewing risk assessment from the standpoint of assets
and threats is necessary but not sufficient.

Participants in this session discussed relevant extracts from
Redefining Security (JSC, 1994), fundamental questions and
terminology, multidimensional complexity, trade-off and
balance, scope of IT security, decision-making, system
characteristics, contingency plans, and dissemination of
information.

8.1.1     Extracts from Redefining Security

Like many of the other sessions in this workshop, we found
relevant extracts in Redefining Security (JSC, 1994):

  y   Security of information systems and networks is the
      major security challenge of this decade and possibly the
      next century.
  
  y   The paradigm for managing information security is
      subscribers within a worldwide utility connected to and
      dependent upon an infrastructure they neither own nor
      control.
  
  y   In most cases, it is possible to balance risk of loss or
      damage of disclosure against cost of countermeasures.
  
  y   We must use a risk management approach that considers
      actual threats, inherent vulnerabilities, and
      availability and cost of countermeasures.
  
  y   Risk management requires evaluating the resource impact
      of proposed changes in security policies and standards.
  
The members of the working session felt that Figure 1,
extracted from Redefining Security (JSC, 1994), which shows
the risk management process, is an attempt to use the
scientific method for a problem that has not been reduced to
science.

                               

               Figure 1. Risk Management Process

8.1.2     Tools Needed for Risk Management

Among the tools needed for risk management are a language to
capture requirements and maintain cognizance of requirements
throughout a system's life cycle; a risk quantification method
that relates to actual requirements, addresses inherent risks,
deals with complex implementations, and performs meaningful
computations; a methodology to lead designers and evaluators
through the full spectrum of risk issues, identifying which
concerns are applicable to a particular system and going into
more depth where appropriate; and a listing or rating of risk
reducers.


8.2  FUNDAMENTAL AND VERY TOUGH QUESTIONS

Fundamental and very tough questions need to be answered to
make any progress on risk management: What are the security
requirements? In what ways are we at risk of not meeting those
requirements? How much are we willing to spend to mitigate
those risks and to what degree? What should be the
government's role in helping to protect information held by
private citizens and institutions? How can government
technology be provided to the private sector for the
protection of sensitive unclassified information? Will the
private sector accept it?


8.3  TERMINOLOGY

Semantic distinctions and definitions are very much part of
the problem faced in capturing and presenting issues in
assurance and risk management. Even when terms are defined, it
is very difficult to get people to read the definitions and to
use the terms as defined. Nevertheless, failure to define
terms almost guarantees failure in meaningful interchanges
concerning risk management.

This session met this problem half-way. We identified four key
terms that must be defined: risk, threat, vulnerability, and
susceptibility. The participants were able to communicate
based on prior knowledge from working in the field. However,
we recognized that there are multiple authoritative
definitions which differ among themselves in both subtle and
more obvious ways.


8.4  MULTIDIMENSIONAL COMPLEXITY

While the desirability of quantification is recognized, it may
not be possible given the state of understanding. Qualitative
descriptors may be sufficient and necessary based on whether
an assurance factor is quantifiable. In some instances, simple
ordering may be achievable and desirable.

One of the consequences of the paradigm switch from risk
avoidance to risk management is that it becomes necessary to
deal with the unimaginable. Especially in times of decreasing
resources, it is necessary to think about what actions should
be taken if highly undesirable events occur.

As discussed in more detail below, it is also necessary to
consider incomparables in risk trade-offs and management.
People may make decisions based on system security, human
safety, personal career, or any other factor that they may
consider to be important to themselves or their organization.
In addition, security risks are only one component of risk
management. The risks to development/production schedules,
inclusion of competitive, state-of-the-art technology, and
sales factors often dwarf the security risks in the decision-
making process.

The imperfections of current risk management techniques were
acknowledged, but no alternatives were identified. The group
generally agreed that, although the techniques and tools for
performing risk analysis could be improved, the management of
risk will always be an integral part of product and system
development. It will be necessary to refine the concepts and
practices of risk management as they are applied to
information security.

In discussing risk management, it is necessary to distinguish
between the general concept of risk management and specific
techniques. It is not uncommon for a discussion to be couched
in terms of risk management when the speakers have specific
techniques in mind. Communication can be especially difficult
when different techniques are being discussed but have not
been made clear.


8.5  TRADEOFF AND BALANCE

There are several kinds of risks to which systems are
subjected, including technical, schedule, cost, security, and
safety. Satisfaction of all objectives and avoidance of all
risks are generally impossible because the objectives or the
techniques used to achieve these objectives are often in
conflict.

Perspective enhances the ability to make the trade-offs, but
the job is never easy. It involves balancing conflicting
equities. Sometimes, decisions are made suboptimally because
the decision-maker is unaware of all the consequences.


8.6  SCOPE OF IT SECURITY

Traditionally, IT security has focused on products and
systems. However, the scope extends beyond these areas in
several dimensions. Security can affect the survival and well
being of entities, including the individual, the organization,
the nation, and the planet.

Integrating products into systems and forming systems of
systems are unsolved security problems. It has been recognized
for several years that we need standards and procedures for
preserving security attributes and properties through the
integration process. Little or no progress has been made on
developing guidance or codifying good practice in this area.
The security impact of integration remains an art form due, in
part, to the subjective nature of risk management.

IT systems exist in an environment. One of the salient
characteristics of systems, as defined in the ITSEC and FC, is
that a system is used in a specific real environment. The IT
system and the environment are real entities that interact.
The circumstances and realities of the environment constitute
boundary conditions and requirements on the IT system. Non-
technical countermeasures are also part of the environment.
The opinion has been voiced, but not conclusively established,
that non-technical countermeasures are more cost-effective
than technical ones. Proving and using this assertion can be
both a demonstration of risk management techniques and a tool
in the utopian trade-off tool kit.

A significant part of the environment is the information
infrastructure. Networks connect resources across agencies,
companies, industries, countries, and the world. The laissez
faire, cooperative, decentralized federation of the Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA) sponsored Internet in the
1980s appears inadequate for the commercialized global
Internet evolving in the 1990s. Understanding and responding
to changes in this part of the environment are significant
problems.


8.7  DECISION MAKING TECHNIQUES

Management has been described as decision-making based on
insufficient information, and risk management is decision-
making in the face of uncertainty. Risk management can be
characterized as technically complex, multivariate, and not
fully understood. Existing techniques include sensitivity
analysis, system effectiveness analysis, and cost-benefit
analysis.

It is not clear whether such techniques are applicable to
managing security risk. Data is lacking on whether these
techniques have been employed, whether they have proven to be
effective, and how acceptable they are to the risk managers.

The models underlying the techniques also need to be
reexamined. Are Bayesian, probabilistic, and actuarial
statistics applicable? How does the possibility of a human
agent attempting to violate system security policy affect the
underlying assumptions on which the models are based? Are
fuzzy system techniques applicable and acceptable?


8.8  DECISION-MAKERS

Who makes which type(s) of decision(s)? The appropriate
person, level, criteria, and method for making a decision is
not always clear. Technical personnel, line management, and
type management all make decisions that impact risk. Technical
personnel may not recognize overriding policy or political
concerns, for example.

Accepting responsibility for decisions is complicated by group
decision-making techniques, such as mutual and peer decision
making. In addition, many organizations have lack of
responsibility built into their decision-making processes. In
these organizations, decision-makers are on a fixed, short-
term tour of duty in which it is essentially guaranteed that a
product/system will not be operationally deployed by the time
their tour is over. Because of this, the decision-maker may
consider career advancement decisions and avoidance of adverse
publicity to be major factors is the decision-making process
as they will not be directly accountable for the operational
product/system. There needs to be more accountability of these
decisions, perhaps by placing people into positions so they
stay with a project, having responsibility for all stages in
the development and deployment of that system.

Qualification of decision-makers is highly variable. Academic
training in the referenced techniques is infrequent. Many
organizations believe that general managers or general
officers can move among disciplines with equal effectiveness.


8.9  BASIS FOR DECISIONS

Managers make decisions based on many considerations. The
scope of their influence or knowledge base will shape their
decisions both in terms of technical/political risks and
localized/global perspective. Career impact is a highly
motivating decision basis and may result in a decision that
reflects personal accountability and not necessarily
technically optimum. The decisions are often made without
sufficient information and are therefore somewhat error prone,
if not highly subjective in nature.

In addition, there appears to be a tendency to focus on active
threats, perhaps because of their urgency. We must not neglect
systemic features that allow error and omissions to escalate.
Passive threats can also cause catastrophes. There is a need
to put more emphasis on long-term countermeasures because that
is where true risk management comes into play. Short-term
countermeasures have been easier to define but do not look
into potential threats and susceptibilities.

There also needs to be more of a look at risks not based
solely on threats and assets. Inherent risks, reliability, and
development risks are all factors that need to be added to the
risk management considerations.


8.10 SYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS

There are some significant differences between IT systems and
other engineering products that affect security risk
management. Many of the techniques applicable to continuous
physical systems do not apply to IT systems because of
discontinuity in hardware and software (Zelkowitz, 1994). IT
systems can be unforgiving and are becoming more
unpredictable. Small errors, problems, or breaches can have
large effects. It is not clear whether it is possible to over-
engineer software systems to build in a margin for error, as
it is in other engineering disciples, especially
manufacturing.


8.11 CONTINGENCY PLANS

Contingency planning in the form of backup data storage and
remote alternate operation sites has long been part of
security planning for availability, reflecting the preparation
for undesirable event occurrences. The safety community
practices risk toleration as another form of contingency
planning. Contingency planning needs to be extended to other
security policy objectives such as confidentiality and
integrity. The paradigm shift away from risk prevention
implies occasional policy breaches for which provision should
be made.


8.12 DISSEMINATING INFORMATION

While risk management must function in the absence of
sufficient information, there is no virtue in taking on an
unnecessary handicap. Accumulated information about risks and
countermeasures must be made available. Disseminating such
information is, itself, a risk management decision. It is not
possible to keep the information from the penetrators, nor is
it possible to force all system administrators to act with
what we consider necessary prudence.

However, decision-makers have always been reluctant to keep
and/or provide records of the risk management decisions being
made. There are many reasons for this. These decisions are not
made with a great deal of quantitative data and are therefore
highly subjective in nature. Without objective, quantitative
data to back up decisions, many responsible managers do not
wish to be second-guessed years after a decision has been
made. Therefore, records are seen as a liability and not
diligently kept.

                           SECTION 9
                               
                            CLOSING
                               
                               
The attendees of the workshop were asked three questions at
the closing session: "Was there utility in this first workshop
for IT security?" "Should there be future such workshops?" and
"If so (to the first two questions), what should be the
frequency of the workshops ?"


9.1  IT SECURITY ASSURANCE WORKSHOP UTILITY

The general consensus was that a forum to discuss the issues
of IT security assurance was of great use to the community. In
particular, this workshop determined that assurance is still a
somewhat nebulous subject. There are many questions that need
to be explored. It is still difficult to define precisely what
is meant by assurance, and the definition varies from person
to person and enterprise to enterprise. The questions of how
to gain assurance, how to relay assurance gained, and how to
use assurance all need further study. It was generally felt
that just the identification of these questions for further
study made the workshop a useful exercise.

There was some sentiment that these subjects need to be pushed
back out into the community for actual resolution. Discussions
in a short workshop must remain at a high level. Therefore, no
problems could be resolved at such meetings. However, the
group decided that this group could help provide the questions
that could be addressed through research. One method for doing
this in the near future is to provide the proceedings to other
forums considering the subject of assurance, especially those
attending the International Workshop of Developmental
Assurance being held in Maryland in June 1994. In addition, a
panel discussion on the results of both of the assurance
workshops has been scheduled for the National Computer
Security Conference in October 1994. It is thought that these
forums will further advance the discussions and move the
community one step closer to resolution of some of the issues
identified.


9.2  FUTURE ASSURANCE WORKSHOPS

Based on the utility discussion, the group agreed that future
workshops should take place. However, the group also agreed
that it should strive to move beyond identifying issues to
resolution of some of these issues. It was agreed that this
could happen once the problems are well defined. Workshop
sessions could then concentrate on issues of much finer
detail.


9.3  FREQUENCY OF WORKSHOPS

The group did not determine a specific duration between
workshops. Instead, it was generally decided that they should
be planned as needed. Because of the impending Developmental
Workshop and the assurance discussion planned for the NCSC in
October, the planning committee has decided to target spring
1995 for the next workshop.


9.4  OBSERVATIONS ON PROGRESS

One conclusion/observation is that the security community has
made little progress in the past years in truly understanding
the issues at hand, and there is little hope for the immediate
future. We continue to spend large amounts of resources trying
to address simple issues such as definition of terms and high-
level processes (again and again), while failing to understand
the user community's needs and promote a strong security
awareness among the general user population. While there
appeared to be much agreement on what had been done wrong in
the past, there appeared to be little consensus on how to
proceed. One thing appears clear though: with the rapidly
changing technology and threat environment, unless the
security community becomes more proactive, more in touch with
the real user needs and expectations, and does a better job of
developing security awareness in the user community (to ensure
security is built in and maintained during operation of the
system), the security of our information and resources will
not improve.


                      LIST OF REFERENCES
                               
                               
Bell, D. E., and L. J. LaPadula, 1975, Secure Computer
Systems: Generalized Framework for Exposition and Multics
Interpretation, ESD-TR-75-306, The MITRE Corporation. (Also
available through NIST, Springfield, VA AD-A023588)

Canadian System Security Center, January 1993, The Canadian
Trusted Computer Product Evaluation Criteria, Version 3.0e.

Commission of the European Communities, 28 June 1991,
Information Technology Security Evaluation Criteria (ITSEC):
Provisional Harmonized Criteria, Luxembourg: Office for
Official Publications of the European Communities, Version
1.2.

Computer Science Laboratory, March 1992, EHDM Specifications
and Verification System - Version 6.1 User's Guide, Technical
Report, SRI International.

Department of Defense, 1985, Department of Defense Trusted
Computer System Evaluation Criteria, DOD 5200.28-STD,
Washington, DC.

European Computer Manufacturers Association, 14 December 1989,
Security in Open Systems, Data Elements and Device
Definitions, ECMA-138.

ISO 9000, International Standards for Quality Management, 2nd
Edition, 1987-1991

Joint Security Committee Report, 28 February 1994, Redefining
Security: A Report to the Secretary of Defense and the
Director of Central Intelligence, Joint Security Committee,
Washington DC.

Korelsky, Tanya, and David Rosenthal, August 1992, Integrated
Trusted Systems Development Environment Tools Final Report,
Technical Report, ORA Corporation.

McEnerney, Joseph R., D. G. Weber, Randall Brown, and R.
Varadarajah, October 1990, "Automated Extensibility in THETA,"
Proceedings 13th National Computer Security Conference,
Washington, D.C.

McDermid, John A., 1991, "Issues in Developing Software for
Safety Critical Systems," Reliability Engineering and System
Safety, Volume 32, 1991, pages 1-24.

National Computer Security Center, 25 June 1985, Computer
Security Requirements: Guidance for Applying the Department of
Defense Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria in
Specific Environments (Yellow Books), National Security
Agency, Fort George G. Meade, MD.

National Institute of Standards and Technology and National
Security Agency, December 1992, Federal Criteria for
Information Technology Security, Version 1.0.

National Research Council, 1991, Computers at Risk Safe
Computing In the Information Age.

O'Brien, Richard, and Clyde Rogers, October 1991, "Developing
Applications on LOCK," 14th National Computer Security
Conference.

Saltman, Roy G., December 1993, Good Security Practices for
Electronic Commerce, Including Electronic Data Interchange.

Zelkowitz, M. V., 1994, Models and Algebra (and Reality).
                           APPENDIX
                               
                               
                           ATTENDEES
                               
                               
Listed below are the workshop attendees (asterisks indicate
members of the organizing committee):
Marshall Abrams*                 Karen Ferraiolo
The MITRE Corporation            ARCA Systems, Inc.
7525 Colshire Drive              8229 Boone Blvd., #610
McLean, VA 22102                 Vienna, VA 22182
(703) 883-6938                   (703) 724-5611
abrams@mitre.org                 ferraiolo@arca.va.com
                                 
Dee Akers*                       Sharon Fletcher
The MITRE Corporation            Sandia National Laboratories
7525 Colshire Drive              Dept. 9411
MS Z274                          Albuquerque, NM 87185-0778
McLean, VA 22102                 (505) 844-2251
(703) 883-5907                   skflete@sandia.gov
akers@mitre.org                  
                                 Lester Fraim
Lynn Ambuel*                     The MITRE Corporation
NSA,I94                          7525 Colshire Drive
Fort Meade, MD 20755-600         McLean, VA 22102
(410) 859-4463                   (703) 883-6339
ambuel@dockmaster.ncsc.mil       fraim@mitre.org
                                 
Blaine Burnham                   Art Friedman
NSA,V12                          The MITRE Corporation
9800 Savage Rd                   7525 Colshire Drive
Fort Meade, MD 20755-6020        McLean, VA 22102
burnham@dockmaster.ncsc.mil      (410) 859-6700/01
                                 arf@mitre.org
Debbie Campbell                  
NSA/I94                          Judith N. Froscher*
9800 Savage Rd                   Naval Research Laboratory
Fort George G. Meade, MD         Code 5542
20755                            Washington, DC 20375
(401) 859-4464                   (202) 767-3012
dscampbell@dockmaster.ncsc.m     froscher@itd.nrl.navy.mil
il                               
                                 Bret Hartman
Julie Connolly                   Odyssey Research Associates
NSA/I91                          301 Dates Drive
9800 Savage Rd                   Ithaca, NY 14850
Fort Meade, MD 20755             (607) 277-2020
(410) 684-7374                   bret@oracorp.com
jlconnolly@dockmaster.ncsc.m     
il                               Chuck Howell
                                 The MITRE Corporation
7525 Colshire Drive              
McLean, VA 22102                 Bill Neugent
(703) 883-6080                   The MITRE Corporation
howell@mitre.org                 7525 Colshire Drive
                                 McLean, VA 22102
Jay Kahn                         (703) 883-6632
The MITRE Corporation            wneugent@smiley.mitre.org
7525 Colshire Drive              
McLean, VA 22102-3481            Ingrid Olson
(703) 883-6622                   The MITRE Corporation
jkahn@mitre.org                  7525 Colshire Drive
                                 McLean, VA 22102
Doug Landall                     (703) 883-7044
ARCA Systems                     iolson@smiley.mitre.org
10320 Little Patuxent            
Parkway                          Bernard Roussely
Columbia, MD 21044               SCSSI
(410) 715-0500                   18, rue du Docteur Zamenhof
landoll.arca.md.com              G2131 ISSY-LES-MOULINEAUX
                                 France
Burkhard Lau                     SSI13@calvacom.fr
Delft University of              
Technology                       Joel Sachs
P.O. Box 365                     ARCA Systems
NL-2624 AJ Delft                 One Commerce Center
Netherlands                      10320 Little Patuxent Pkwy
31-15-787106                     Suite 1005
B.Lau@IS.TWI.TUDelft.NL          Columbia, MD 21044
                                 (410) 715-0500
John McDermid                    sachs@area.md.com
University of York               
Heslington, York                 Ravi Sandhu
Y015DD, UK                       George Mason University
44 904 432726                    Issue Department, MS4A4
jam@minster.york.ac.uk           Fairfax, VA 22030
                                 (703) 993-1659
Piers McMahon                    sandhu@gmu.edu
ICL                              
Kings Road                       Dan Sterne
33 Kings Road                    Trusted Information Systems
Reading, RG13PK, UK              3060 Washington Road
pvmcmahon@rea0803.mins.icl.c     Glenwood, MD 21738
o.uk                             (301) 854-6889
+44 734 634882                   sterne@tis.com

Pat Toth*
National Institute of
Standards and Technology
National Computer Systems
Laboratory
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
(302) 975-5140
toth@csmes.ncsl.nist.gov

Caralyn Wichers*
BBN
9810 Patuxent Woods Drive
Columbia, MD 21046-1562
(410) 290-6188
cwichers@bbn.com

Jim Williams
The MITRE Corporation
202 Burlington Rd
Bedford, MA 01730
(617) 271-2647
jgw@mitre.org

                           GLOSSARY
                               
                               
ACSA        Annual Computer Security Applications Conference

ADP         automatic data processing

ANSI        American National Standards Institute

ARPA        Advanced Research Projects Agency

CAS         Controlled Application Set

COTS        commercial off-the-shelf

DOD         Department of Defense

ECMA        European Computer Manufacturers Association

INFOSECinformation security

ISO         International Standards Organization

IT               information technology

IWITAT      Invitational Workshop on Information Technology
       Assurance and  Trustworthiness

JSC         Joint Security Commission

MAC         mandatory access control

MLS         multilevel secure

NIST        National Institute of Standards and Technology

NRL         Naval Research Laboratory

NSA         National Security Agency

OO          object oriented

OS          operating systems

R&D         research and development

SINTRA      Secure Information Through Replicated Architecture

SQL         Structured Query Language

TCB         trusted computing base

TCSEC       Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria

U.S.        United States


_______________________________
1 The groups shown below were developed using one of the Juran
  Management and Planning Tools known as an Affinity Diagram.
  Each issue identified during the brainstorming session was
  written on a post-it note. All post-it notes were then
  randomly placed on the wall and then moved into groups.
  During the process, no one spoke, and everyone worked
  simultaneously. The process continued until everyone was
  satisfied with the groups. When one issue appeared to be
  appropriate in two or more groups, duplicate post-it notes
  were made.
  
2 A stovepipe system has a low degree of horizontal
  integration with other systems in an enterprise, and a high
  degree of vertical integration. That is, it does not share
  or communicate well or at all with other platforms'
  resources at the same levels in their respective
  architectures. By vertical integration, a system may have
  its own dedicated displays, computer hardware and software,
  communications lines, phone system, sensors, etc. Stovepipe
  systems have the connotation of potentially never being used
  again. The term has a pejorative connotation of a system
  potentially never being used again. It is often associated
  with a program-specific one-time solution that fit the exact
  system or situation at hand, and is not interoperable with
  other programs.
  
  The primary advantage of stovepipe systems is performance.
  They are dedicated to one use and offer maximum
  availability. There are also advantages for developers. By
  having all their own vertical components, they may be faster
  to build as they are independent of common architecture
  definitions and therefore avoid politics. The disadvantages
  are generally related to maintenance and extensibility, and
  they can be more expensive than general purpose systems.
  
3 Readers unfamiliar with fuzzy logic are referred to Lotfi A.
  Zadeh; Fuzzy Logic, Neural Networks, and Soft Computing;
  Communications of the ACM; March 1, 1994, v 37, n 3, page
  77.
  
4 This definition is significantly stronger than that found in
  the NSA Glossary of Computer Security Terms which defines
  assurance relative to an assumed system security policy
  that, in some cases, may be irrelevant to the security needs
  of people whose lives may be affected by the system at hand.
  The Federal Criteria's definition, which is closer to ours,
  splits assurance into profile assurance and IT product
  assurance.  Profile assurance is equated with technical
  soundness, which implies appropriateness of the profile's
  functional and assurance requirements.