Foglight 5.9.5 - Security and Compliance Guide

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.