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Proposal

Cyber Resilience Practices

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 - 10:15 by Tobie Langel
This proposal is in the Project Proposal Phase (as defined in the Eclipse Development Process) and is written to declare its intent and scope. We solicit additional participation and input from the community. Please login and add your feedback in the comments section.
Is this a specification project?
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Implementation Patent License
Parent Project
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Created
Background

The Eclipse Foundation has recently launched the Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group (ORC WG). This working group brings together key stakeholders from industry, small and medium enterprise (SME), research, and open source foundations to help address new government regulations impacting open source communities through education, thought leadership, engaging with relevant institutions, and developing specifications.

One of the initial focuses of the ORC WG is to help open source communities and the broader tech industry better understand and prepare to meet the compliance requirements of the European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and of similar upcoming legislation in other jurisdictions. To do so, the ORC WG has created the Cyber Resilience Special Interest Group (SIG). This SIG has identified a set of specifications that are required to further its mission. The intention is for the Cyber Resilience Practices Project to host these specifications and develop them with guidance from the SIG.

Initial work will focus on implementing the specifications defined by the SIG’s 2025 Deliverables Plan, including:

  • Vulnerability Handling;
  • Security Policy for Open Source Software Stewards;
  • Principles for Cyber Resilience for Open Source Development; and
  • Generic Security Requirements for Open Source Components.

This Vulnerability Handling specification will be created first.

Scope

Cyber Resilience Practices provides specifications designed to support compliance with global legislation aimed at enhancing cyber resilience.

Description

The Cyber Resilience Practices Project develops specifications designed to help improve the cyber resilience of open source projects and of the products that incorporate these projects and facilitate compliance with related regulation worldwide.

The first specification to be developed by this project is the Vulnerability Handling Specification.

The Vulnerability Handling Specification focuses on vulnerability management for products with digital elements, as outlined by the Essential Requirements of the CRA. It details the necessary components of a vulnerability handling policy, including procedures for receiving reports, resolving issues, and disclosing vulnerabilities. Additionally, it specifies the requirements for managing vulnerable dependencies.

Why Here?

An Eclipse Foundation Project is the logical home to develop specifications for Eclipse Foundation working groups.

Future Work

The project plans to continue addressing industry and community needs related to cyber resilience as they arise with the goal of continuously improving the cyber resilience of open source projects.

Project Scheduling

The project scheduling is still in the planning phase as it requires careful coordination with the institutions.

Initial Contribution

The initial contribution consists of an initial draft of the Vulnerability Handling specification in Markdown format.

Source Repository Type

Two types of machine readable vulnerability reporting have been used extensively to communicate with customers with affected products.

  1. Secure Advisories - following CSAF profile 4 Security Advisory profile is vulnerability centric reporting on a specif vulnerability and affected products
  2. Vulnerability Disclosure Reports (NIST Guidance in SP 800-161r1) now renamed Vulnerability Advisory Report (VAR) reporting on the vulnerability status of a specific product, typically at the SBOM component level. Two machine readable VDR/VAR formats are available:
  • Implicit, only listing SBOM components with reported vulnerabilities in a product
  • Explicit - lists each SBOM component with its vulnerability status including those with no vulnerabilities reported serving as an attestation by a supplier of their vulnerability monitoring activities per product

Both implicit and explicit options of VDR/VAR have open source, free to use machine readable formats available for use that follow NIST SP 800-161r1 RA5 data requirements

Th US Government has created a SCRM best practices guide that guides government agencies in acquiring trustworthy software products, which contains a section on Vulnerability Management expectations following NIST Guidance from product suppliers; CISA Secure by Design Software Acquisition Guide link

The Cyber Resilience Practices Project develops specifications designed to help improve the cyber resilience of open source projects and of the products that incorporate these projects and facilitate compliance with related regulation worldwide.