IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Safeguard Catalogue - Hardware & Software Remarks
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S 4.92 Secure operation of a system management
system
Initiation responsibility: Head of IT Section, IT Security Management
Implementation responsibility: Administrators
To ensure the secure operation of a system management system, which may
consist of a number of different management tools (see S 2.171 Selection of a
suitable system management product), the configuration of all components
involved must be examined to ascertain that it is secure (see also S 4.91
Secure installation of a system management system). To do this it is necessary
to provide appropriate security for the operating systems of the components
which are administered by the system management system and which
therefore have installed parts of the system in the form of software and/or
data. The provision of security also includes the secure siting of the computers
that perform central tasks for the management system (management servers or
computers with management databases). In addition, provision must be made
for secure data transmission (see S 5.68 Use of encryption procedures for
network communications).
Particular attention should be paid to the following points during operation of
a management system:
- The new hardware and software components added by the management
system must be documented in the course of updating of the system
documentation.
- Changes to the management system itself must also be documented and/or
logged.
- Updating must be carried out in the same way for the emergency procedure
manual. In particular the startup and recovery plans must be modified,
because after the introduction of a management system many standard
functions of the administered operating systems can only be executed with
the aid of the functions of the management system. On the other hand,
however, the emergency procedure manual must also include instructions
on how the system can be made available without the management system
(for example in the event of total failure of central components) to a
sufficient degree within a short time (emergency operation regulation; see
also Section 3.3 Contingency planning concept).
- Access to the components or data of the management system is generally
carried out exclusively by the management system itself or by other
authorised system mechanisms (such as a data backup system). Access
must therefore be prohibited for normal users. In normal cases this also
applies to the role of the local administrator of an individual computer. If it
does become necessary in exceptional cases to access the local components
of the management system on a computer (for example for crash recovery
or when installing new components, assuming the management system
does not support this as part of its management function), this authorisation
should be granted explicitly, and only for performing this particular task.
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000