[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 105 (Wednesday, June 1, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 34976-34978]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-12860]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Institute of Standards and Technology

[Docket No.: 160429381-6381-01]


National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence Data Integrity 
Building Block

AGENCY: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of 
Commerce.

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 
invites organizations to provide products and technical expertise to 
support and demonstrate security platforms for the Data Integrity 
Building Block. This notice is the initial step for the National 
Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) in collaborating with 
technology companies to address cybersecurity challenges identified 
under the Data Integrity Building Block. Participation in the Data 
Integrity Building Block is open to all interested organizations.

DATES: Interested parties must contact NIST to request a letter of 
interest template to be completed and submitted to NIST. Letters of 
interest will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. 
Collaborative activities will commence as soon as enough completed and 
signed letters of interest have been returned to address all the 
necessary components and capabilities, but no earlier than July 1, 
2016. When the Data Integrity Building Block has been completed, NIST 
will post a notice on the NCCoE Data Integrity Building Block Web site 
at https://nccoe.nist.gov/projects/building_blocks/data_integrity 
announcing the completion of the Data Integrity Building Block and 
informing the public that it will no longer accept letters of interest 
for this Data Integrity Building Block.

ADDRESSES: The NCCoE is located at 9700 Great Seneca Highway, 
Rockville, MD 20850. Letters of interest must be submitted to [email protected] or via hardcopy to National Institute of Standards and 
Technology, NCCoE; 9700 Great Seneca Highway, Rockville, MD 20850. 
Organizations whose letters of interest are accepted in accordance with 
the process set forth in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section of this 
notice will be asked to sign a Cooperative Research and Development 
Agreement (CRADA) with NIST. A CRADA template can be found at: https://nccoe.nist.gov/library/nccoe-consortium-crada-example.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Don Tobin via email to 
[email protected], by telephone 301-975-0239, or by mail to 
National Institute of Standards and Technology, NCCoE; 9700 Great 
Seneca Highway, Rockville, MD 20850. Additional details about the Data 
Integrity Building Block are available at https://nccoe.nist.gov/projects/building_blocks/data_integrity.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Background

    The NCCoE, part of NIST, is a public-private collaboration for 
accelerating the widespread adoption of integrated cybersecurity tools 
and technologies. The NCCoE brings together experts from industry, 
government, and academia under one roof to develop practical, 
interoperable cybersecurity approaches that address the real-world 
needs of complex Information Technology (IT) systems. By accelerating 
dissemination and use of these integrated tools and technologies for 
protecting IT assets, the NCCoE will enhance trust in U.S. IT 
communications, data, and storage systems; reduce risk for companies 
and individuals using IT systems; and encourage development of 
innovative, job-creating cybersecurity products and services.

[[Page 34977]]

Process

    NIST is soliciting responses from all sources of relevant security 
capabilities (see below) to enter into a Cooperative Research and 
Development Agreement (CRADA) to provide products and technical 
expertise to support and demonstrate security platforms for the Data 
Integrity Building Block. The full Data Integrity Building Block can be 
viewed at: https://nccoe.nist.gov/projects/building_blocks/data_integrity.
    Interested parties should contact NIST using the information 
provided in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section of this notice. 
NIST will then provide each interested party with a letter of interest 
template, which the party must complete, certify that it is accurate, 
and submit to NIST. NIST will contact interested parties if there are 
questions regarding the responsiveness of the letters of interest to 
the Data Integrity Building Block objective or requirements identified 
below. NIST will select participants who have submitted complete 
letters of interest on a first come, first served basis within each 
category of product components or capabilities listed below up to the 
number of participants in each category necessary to carry out this 
Data Integrity Building Block. However, there may be continuing 
opportunity to participate even after initial activity commences. 
Selected participants will be required to enter into a consortium CRADA 
with NIST (for reference, see ADDRESSES section above). NIST published 
a notice in the Federal Register on October 19, 2012 (77 FR 64314) 
inviting U.S. companies to enter into National Cybersecurity Excellence 
Partnerships (NCEPs) in furtherance of the NCCoE. For this 
demonstration project, NCEP partners will not be given priority for 
participation.

Data Integrity Building Block Objective

    The goal of this project is to mitigate the impacts of data 
corruption when recovering systems from backup storage. The solution 
will provide guidance for incorporating post-attack data corruption 
detection and recovery strategies into a corporate IT architecture. The 
project will explore methods to address the integrity of commodity 
components (operating systems, applications, and software 
configurations), custom applications, and data (database and files) and 
provide corruption indicators and activity logs to the security 
analysts to identify the malicious activity. It will produce an 
architecture that includes components that will integrate notification 
of data corruption events coupled with approaches to automate recovery 
from such events.
    A detailed description of the Data Integrity Building Block is 
available at: https://nccoe.nist.gov/projects/building_blocks/data_integrity.

Requirements

    Each responding organization's letter of interest should identify 
which security platform component(s) or capability(ies) it is offering. 
Letters of interest should not include company proprietary information, 
and all components and capabilities must be commercially available. 
Components are listed in the High-level Architecture section of the 
Data Integrity Building Block (for reference, please see the link in 
the PROCESS section above) and include, but are not limited to:
     File integrity monitors
     File versioning systems
     File integrity testing capabilities
     User activity monitoring tools
     Configuration management systems
     Database rollback tools
     Virtual machine integrity/snapshots/versioning 
capabilities
     Versioning file systems
     Journaling file systems
    Each responding organization's letter of interest should identify 
how their products address one or more of the following desired 
solution characteristics in the High Level Architecture section of the 
Data Integrity Building Block (for reference, please see the link in 
the PROCESS section above):
     Automated data corruption testing
     Automated data corruption detection
     Automated data corruption event logging
     Secure data integrity monitoring and alerting information 
(checksums, off-site, hard-copy)
     Automated detection and reporting of all file 
modifications/creations/deletions
     Automated detection and reporting of all database 
modifications/creations/deletions
     Automated correlation of file changes and users
     Automated user activity recording
     Automated anomalous user activity detection
     Automated configuration management monitoring
    Responding organizations need to understand and, in their letters 
of interest, commit to provide:
    1. Access for all participants' project teams to component 
interfaces and the organization's experts necessary to make functional 
connections among security platform components
    2. Support for development and demonstration of the Data Integrity 
Building Block in NCCoE facilities which will be conducted in a manner 
consistent with Federal requirements (e.g., FIPS 200, FIPS 201, SP 800-
53, and SP 800-63)
    Additional details about the Data Integrity Building Block are 
available at: https://nccoe.nist.gov/projects/building_blocks/data_integrity.
    NIST cannot guarantee that all of the products proposed by 
respondents will be used in the demonstration. Each prospective 
participant will be expected to work collaboratively with NIST staff 
and other project participants under the terms of the consortium CRADA 
in the development of the Data Integrity Building Block. Prospective 
participants' contribution to the collaborative effort will include 
assistance in establishing the necessary interface functionality, 
connection and set-up capabilities and procedures, demonstration 
harnesses, environmental and safety conditions for use, integrated 
platform user instructions, and demonstration plans and scripts 
necessary to demonstrate the desired capabilities. Each participant 
will train NIST personnel, as necessary, to operate its product in 
capability demonstrations. Following successful demonstrations, NIST 
will publish a description of the security platform and its performance 
characteristics sufficient to permit other organizations to develop and 
deploy security platforms that meet the security objectives of the Data 
Integrity Building Block. These descriptions will be public 
information.
    Under the terms of the consortium CRADA, NIST will support 
development of interfaces among participants' products by providing IT 
infrastructure, laboratory facilities, office facilities, collaboration 
facilities, and staff support to component composition, security 
platform documentation, and demonstration activities.
    The dates of the demonstration of the Data Integrity Building Block 
capability will be announced on the NCCoE Web site at least two weeks 
in advance at http://nccoe.nist.gov/. The expected outcome of the 
demonstration is to improve data integrity within the enterprise. 
Participating organizations will gain from the knowledge that their 
products are interoperable with other participants' offerings.
    For additional information on the NCCoE governance, business 
processes, and NCCoE operational structure, visit

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the NCCoE Web site http://nccoe.nist.gov/.

Kevin Kimball,
NIST Chief of Staff.
[FR Doc. 2016-12860 Filed 5-31-16; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-13-P