Foglight for Virtualization Enterprise Edition 8.9.3 - Security and Compliance Guide

Secure use of customers' private keys

In addition to monitoring regular HTTP traffic, appliances can monitor Secure Socket Layer traffic (SSL/TLS). To enable monitoring of SSL traffic, customers upload their private SSL encryption keys to Foglight® using the browser interface. These keys are naturally of high sensitivity to customers.

The SSL keys are stored centrally on the Management Server in an encrypted file. When a Sniffer needs keys, the keys are transmitted over a two-way authenticated and encrypted SSL connection from the Management Server to the Sniffer. The remote Sniffer never writes the keys to disk, using them from memory only. When a Sniffer restarts, it submits a new request for keys.

Foglight uses the AES-256 data encryption algorithm to encrypt the SSL connection. The encryption key is created upon installation and is unique to each customer. It consists of a combination of random data and certain data specific to the customer, making it difficult to guess or enter using brute force. Each Sniffer has its own client certificate that is used for client side authentication, therefore only Sniffers added by the Administrator are allowed to connect to the Management Server. This prevents external attempts to open an SSL connection to the Management Server to request keys. The Sniffers use the server's certificate for authentication to prevent any man-in-the-middle attacks.

Foglight can also use private keys stored in a SafeNet Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) server to decrypt secure traffic. Foglight accesses and uses SafeNet private keys in a secure manner consistent with the SafeNet HSM model. In particular:

Usage feedback

The Foglight® Management Server can collect usage data about your environment and send it to Quest Software Inc. to improve support response. This data helps Quest Software Inc. identify potential bottlenecks, and improve the overall Management Server performance and server versions going forward.

The collected usage data contains information about the visited dashboards. It also includes the unique ID of the Management Server and its version information. It does not identify any users or provide additional information about their actions in the user interface.

By default, this feature may be enabled. To turn it off, click Disable on the Communication dashboard. This dashboard is accessible from the navigation panel in the Foglight browser interface, under Administration > Support > Support Notifications > Automatic Communication with Quest.

Appendix: FISMA compliance

The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by the president as part of the Electronic Government Act of 2002. It requires “each federal agency to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security for the information and information system that support the operations and assets of the agency, including those provided or managed by another agency, contractor, or other source”.

NOTE: For additional details about FISMA, see http://csrc.nist.gov/sec-cert.

A major component of FISMA implementation is the publication by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), entitled “Recommended Security Controls for Federal Information Systems”, listed as NIST Special Publication 800-53 (for additional information about this document, see http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsSPs.html#800-53). This document presents 17 general security categories that can be used to evaluate an information security to measure its level of compliance with FISMA. For this reason, this appendix offers the 17 categories listed in 800-53 and describes how Foglight® addresses them.

NIST 800-53 categories

This section presents the 17 categories listed in the NIST Special Publication 800-53 and describes how Foglight addresses those that apply.

The secure employment of Foglight® forms only one part of an information security program. A statement in this appendix that a particular security category is “applicable” to Foglight means only that Foglight contains security features that are or may be relevant to some or all aspects of the security category in question. It does not necessarily mean that Foglight fully meets all of the requirements described in that security category, or that the use of Foglight by itself guarantees compliance with any particular information security standards or control programs. The selection, specification, and implementation of security controls in accordance with a customer-specific security program is ultimately dependent upon the manner in which the customer deploys, operates, and maintains all of its network and physical infrastructure, including Foglight.

NOTE: Under the NIST Special Publication 800-53, the 17 categories listed in this table define general security control “families” (for example, AC), and each family in turn contains several subcategories (for example, AC-1, AC-2, AC-3, etc.) that further detail related aspects of information security and assurance. For additional information, see Appendix F of NIST Special Publication 800-53.