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Beginner Exercise for OpenControl: Welcome to Freedonia Compliance

Updated and tested in February 2019!

This project repository demonstrates a simple System Security Plan generated using the OpenControl framework to automate security compliance paperwork.

Audience

Anyone trying to get started with OpenControl, Compliance-Masonry, and hyperGRC:

  • FISMA newbies that don't want to write big word documents
  • FISMA experts that need a more efficent way of doing paper work
  • FISMA enforcers that need to trust the OpenControl model and tools we're presenting

Scenario

Freedonia modeled their FRedRAMP program for cyber security certification of major Information Systems after America's FedRAMP program for certifying cloud service providers.

The starting point for FRedRAMP certifications is the FRIST 800-53, which is like America's NIST 800-53 except with fewer security controls.

The Controls

Freedonia's FRIST 800-53 has only 6 security controls:

ID Title Type
AU-1 AUDIT AND ACCOUNTABILITY POLICY AND PROCEDURES organizational control on audit policy
AU-2 AUDIT EVENTS technical control at the node level
PE-2 PHYSICAL ACCESS AUTHORIZATIONS organization control on who accesses data center
SC-1 SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION POLICY AND PROCEDURES organizational control on how components communicate securely
SC-7 BOUNDARY PROTECTION technical control defending boundary of entire system
XX-1 MOCK/DUMMY CONTROL here to demonstrate that a control in standard does not have to referenced in a certification

The Certification

The certification of FRedRAMP-Low requires all the above controls except for XX-1.

The standards and certifications are included in this repository, but also housed in a separate repository for easier re-use at https://github.com/opencontrol/freedonia-frist.

The Information System

The system we're building is a 'Hello World' website for Freedonia, which will comprise:

  • Two Amazon Web Service Virtual Private Clouds (AWS VPCs), one each for development and production
  • In each AWS VPC, one node with NGINX web server and the static content for the website
  • Infrastructure for logging traffic

[Note: This system is still fictitious, but could be built if it helps Masonry users understand the process]

Requirements to Use OpenControl

These steps assume you already have:

Minimal File Structure for an OpenControl-based SSP

Here's the tree structure of our repository:

.
├── README.md   # the file you're reading now
├── components
│   ├── AU_policy
│   │   └── component.yaml        # a local description of the Audit policy (AU)
│   ├── AWS_core
│   │   └── component.yaml        # a local description of the "AWS core" component
│   └── AWS_implementation
│       └── component.yaml        # a local description of the "AWS implementation" component
│
├── markdowns         
│   ├── README.md             # the introduction to the entire SSP
│   ├── SUMMARY.md            # a table of contents for narrative documents of the SSP
│   └── docs  # directory for narrative documents
│       ├── about-the-ssp.md
│       └── Waterfall_model.png # an example image
├── opencontrol.yaml          # the schema for SSP and its remote resources/dependencies

Running compliance-masonry will also generate the directories opencontrols and exports

It just so happens you can get these files and file tree structure by cloning this repository!

The opencontrol.yaml Config File

Notice one file in particular, the opencontrol.yaml file in the root directory of the tree. The opencontrol.yaml file is key to using OpenControl.

OpenControl uses a config file called opencontrol.yaml following the popular configuration file pattern we see with so many tools today. Every OpenControl repository will have at least one opencontrol.yaml file providing critical information and, importantly, information about dependencies on other other OpenControl YAML files and repos.

Here's what the opencontrol.yaml file for our Freedonia project looks like:

schema_version: "1.0.0"
name: freedonia.fd
metadata:
  description: Simple example of OpenControl Compliance-as-Code
  maintainers:
    - greg.elin@govready.com
components:
  - ./components/AU_policy
  - ./components/AWS_core
  - ./components/AWS_implementation
standards:
  - ./standards/FRIST-800-53.yaml
certifications:
  - ./certifications/FredRAMP-low.yaml

Using Compliance-Masonry Quickstart to Build your SSP from Structured Data

Clone this repo, then cd into freedonia-compliance. Then run:

compliance-masonry get
compliance-masonry docs gitbook FredRAMP-low

The compliance-masonry get command reads the opencontrol.yaml file and retrieves all the dependencies, even from other OpenControl repositories!

The compliance-masonry docs gitbook FredRAMP-low command generates a document of the components and standards matching the FRedRAMP-Low certification that is expressed in the gitbook format.

At this point, you have generated content for your SSP inside of the exports directory that has artfully combined data from the all other OpenControl YAML files into a gitbook!

Our next step is to publish/deploy our gitbook content representing our SSP for shared human access. First, install GitBook:

npm install -g gitbook-cli

To make a PDF version:

cd exports && gitbook pdf ./ ./compliance.pdf
# creates the PDF at `exports/compliance.pdf`

PDF screenshoot

A complete generated PDF is included here.

To make a HTML web site version:

cd exports && gitbook serve
# visit your HTML SSP at http://localhost:4000

frontpage

and like this on a page for particular control:

detailpage

The steps above are included in the project's Makefile so you can reliably run, say:

make clean pdf
# or
make clean serve

hyperGRC Quickstart to Maintain your SSP Control Content in a GUI with Structured Data

Clone this repo and clone hyperGRC.

Then cd into hyperGRC repository and follow the README.md instructions to install the Python packages.

To view Freedonia-Compliance in hyperGRC:

python -m hypergrc ../freedonia-compliance/

NOTE: Python 3.5 or higher required. Also, your path to freedonia-compliance repo may be different.

Visit your OpenControl repo in a GUI at http://localhost:8000

See a list of components:

components

View controls associated with a component:

component-controls

View control assembled from components:

control

Review

We've generated a very simple System Security Plan from a bunch of re-usable YAML files and Markdown content in a computer-controlled pipeline style instead of a manually created word documents.

There are big benefits to this approach:

  1. Our SSP is now managed like our codebase; anytime we update our code we can also update our SSP and publish a new one with a single click
  2. Our SSP is more structured and more machine-readable, so we can do other processing
  3. We can document compliance of re-usable components ONCE and re-use the documentation, too

Next Steps

OK. So we got a document. But how do we do include actual verification of the controls in the document? We've started another repo (still in progress) to show building a system and documentation together--and deploying both. Visit freedonia-aws-compliance for that.

You could use this repo as a kind of stub file for your own compliance documentation. Just change the opencontrol.yaml file and the content in the repo.

Feedback

Please open an issue as needed.