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It is my understanding that it has always
been possible for a requirement to be ‘vacuously’ satisfied.
Whenever the requirement is made null or unnecessary by specific
characteristics of the TOE, and this does not thereby prevent satisfying the
intent of the requirement, the requirement is considered to have been
met. This case here is a great example of
same. The startup and shutdown of the auditing must be recorded.
But if audit is never shut down separate from device shutdown and audit is
always active upon startup, then it is true that every (every, every, every)
audit startup and shutdown is being audited with the device startup and
shutdown entries. A separate audit entry for audit startup and shutdown
is clearly neither helpful nor useful and not needed to fully comply with the SFR. Cheers,
From: cc-cmt@nist.gov
[mailto:cc-cmt@nist.gov] On Behalf Of Apted,
Tony J. [RA] What is the purpose of Security Functional Requirements
(SFRs) in a Security Target? Are they intended to specify what security
functionality is to be provided by the TOE, or to specify the security
functionality the TOE implements? This question is raised as the result of a recent validator
comment. The ST claims FAU_GEN.1 and the TSS explains that the TOE satisfies
the aspect of the requirement to audit startup and shutdown of the audit
function because auditing is always enabled – when the TOE starts up, an
audit record of TOE startup is generated, which indicates the startup of the
audit function (and, similarly, the TOE generates an audit record that it is
shutting down, indicating shutdown of the audit function). To my knowledge, and
in my own experience, this reasoning has always been acceptable for justifying
that a TOE satisfies this aspect of FAU_GEN.1. The validator, however, insists
that the ST must explicitly state its audit requirement because it clearly does
not audit startup and shutdown of the audit function (because the TOE does not
provide a capability to turn the audit function on and off). I am interested in other people’s views about this. Anthony J. Apted Lead Evaluator/Senior System Security Engineer SAIC CCTL Ph: (410) 953-6837 Fx: (410) 953-7001 |