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Modulo Announces Open Source SCAP For GRC
Initiative aims to provide a common platform for collecting security data in order to automate policy compliance
October 1, 2010
4 Min Read
PRESS RELEASE
27, 2010 — Modulo, a leading provider of enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions, today announced the industry’s first open source SCAP initiative for Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) management at the 6th Annual IT Security Automation Conference being held September 27-29 at the Baltimore Convention Center. The initiative aims to provide a common platform for collecting security data in order to automate policy compliance, audits, risk assessments and more utilizing the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP). End users, developers and vendors interested in getting more information about the Modulo Open Distributed SCAP Intelligent Collector (modSIC) project and joining the community can visit Modulo at booth # 117 or visit www.modsic.org
Developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), SCAP is a common format for exchanging IT security data and maintaining a standards-based security posture across enterprise systems. By using SCAP Validated commercial products, organizations can automate such critical tasks as verifying the presence of patches, checking system security configuration settings, and examining systems for signs of compromise. SCAP also helps satisfy federal regulation mandates such as FDCC and FISMA.
“SCAP has already enabled significant advancements in vulnerability, configuration and patch management. The nation’s security automation agenda is much broader, however, and many believe it will become a ‘must have’ feature for many other types of security activities and disciplines. We envision further expansion, specifically, in the rapidly growing market for governance, risk and compliance management,” said Alberto Bastos, CTO for Modulo.
“Today there is no common approach for collecting GRC data. By releasing Modulo’s proven framework for building SCAP data collectors into the broader security and GRC domain, this open source initiative has the potential to tap the competence of the growing SCAP community and expand the availability of standards-based collectors - giving organizations greater interoperability among their security and GRC products and making critical advancements in automation,” said Scott Crawford, Managing Research Director, EMA.
modSIC will make it easier for vendors, developers and end users to create and improve their own production-ready, automated data collectors leveraging:
Standardized formats: Leveraging open standards like SCAP and OVAL, the service schedules and collects data remotely and agentlessly, allowing users to input assets and get results for each asset analyzed through the network; the servcie is adaptable and can integrate with third-party software via an easy communication protocol
Distributed architectures: Collects data from different infrastructures isolated by different networks; it is scalable, automatic and can run multiple jobs at the same time by its scheduler and a secure persistence database
Open development and testing community: Extensible tools for community contributions; probes are written as plugins and new ones can be developed using C# compatible with Mono, a free framework library “modSIC uses the OVAL Language to describe vulnerabilities for its intelligent SCAP data collectors. Through participation in the OVAL Adoption Program with both Modulo Risk Manager and now modSIC, Modulo appears to be poised to help expand the implementation of SCAP,” said Jonathan O. Baker, the MITRE Corporation.
“We believe you can never have enough data collectors. Until now the limited availability of SCAP data collection tools has limited its adoption in the broader security and GRC community and organizations have had to write their own APIs or export their data into Excel spreadsheets. After investing over 12 months of research and development in our SCAP framework, we decided the best thing for the industry at large is to bring our technology to the open domain. We are tremendously encouraged by the interest we have received from the community,” added Bastos.
Pricing and Availability
The modSIC code will be available for free download and community participation in Q4 2010 from the Microsoft Codeplex open source repository. For further information, please visit www.modsic.org.
About the 6th Annual IT Security Automation Conference
Hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Security Agency (NSA), and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the 6th Annual IT Security Automation Conference focuses on security automation in support of healthcare IT and cloud computing, using security automation tools and technologies to ease the technical burdens of policy compliance, and innovated uses of automation across the enterprise in both Federal Government and industry applications.
About Modulo
Modulo is a leading global enterprise provider of comprehensive Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) management solutions. Modulo’s Award winning Risk Manager™ provides over 1,000 world-wide organizations with the tools they need to automate the entire GRC management process to monitor, manage and sustain adherence to policy and regulations while reducing enterprise risk and complexity. Visit www.modulo.com for more information.
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