Network security policy enforcment is the work that must be done
to maintain a secure facility, site or host. Most security policy
enforcement mechanisms cannot validate that they are enforcing the
security policy effectively. These well designed and engineered
mechanisms can enforce the policy they are configured to enforce,
but whether the configured policy can actually meet the goals of
the real network security policy is an unknown.
Argus is designed to provide the information needed to validate
that network level access control policies are being enforced, through
its network connectivity monitoring features. Because network access
control is designed to control network connectivity, network connectivity
monitors can be used to indicate whether connectivity to specific
assets is or is not occuring.
With good deployment strategies, Argus data can be generated that
can be used to validate that enterprise wide network security is
being enforced, or that access to a single network element is being
controlled appropriately.
