Page Navigation:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101
Printable Version: RFC1244.PDF
RFC 1244 Site Security Handbook July 1991
that is, if a test is defined to examine the user logon process,
it should be explicitly stated that both valid and invalid user
names and passwords will be used to demonstrate proper operation
of the logon program.
Keep in mind that there is a limit to the reasonableness of tests.
The purpose of testing is to ensure confidence that the security
policy is being correctly enforced, and not to "prove" the
absoluteness of the system or policy. The goal should be to
obtain some assurance that the reasonable and credible controls
imposed by your security policy are adequate.
4.2 Account Management Procedures
Procedures to manage accounts are important in preventing
unauthorized access to your system. It is necessary to decide
several things: Who may have an account on the system? How long may
someone have an account without renewing his or her request? How do
old accounts get removed from the system? The answers to all these
questions should be explicitly set out in the policy.
In addition to deciding who may use a system, it may be important to
determine what each user may use the system for (is personal use
allowed, for example). If you are connected to an outside network,
your site or the network management may have rules about what the
network may be used for. Therefore, it is important for any security
policy to define an adequate account management procedure for both
administrators and users. Typically, the system administrator would
be responsible for creating and deleting user accounts and generally
maintaining overall control of system use. To some degree, account
management is also the responsibility of each system user in the
sense that the user should observe any system messages and events
that may be indicative of a policy violation. For example, a message
at logon that indicates the date and time of the last logon should be
reported by the user if it indicates an unreasonable time of last
logon.
4.3 Password Management Procedures
A policy on password management may be important if your site wishes
to enforce secure passwords. These procedures may range from asking
or forcing users to change their passwords occasionally to actively
attempting to break users' passwords and then informing the user of
how easy it was to do. Another part of password management policy
covers who may distribute passwords - can users give their passwords
to other users?
Section 2.3 discusses some of the policy issues that need to be
Site Security Policy Handbook Working Group [Page 57]