Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language: Difference between revisions

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[http://oval.mitre.org Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language] (OVAL™) is an international, information security, community standard to promote open and publicly available security content, and to standardize the transfer of this information across the entire spectrum of security tools and services. OVAL includes a language used to encode system details, and an assortment of content repositories held throughout the community. The language standardizes the three main steps of the assessment process: representing configuration information of systems for testing; analyzing the system for the presence of the specified machine state (vulnerability, configuration, patch state, etc.); and reporting the results of this assessment. The repositories are collections of publicly available and open content that utilize the language.

The '''Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language''', or '''OVAL''', is a standard for expressing how to check for the presence of vulnerabilities and configuration issues on computer systems, and how to report on the presence and absence of such issues.

The OVAL community has developed three schemas written in Extensible Markup Language (XML) to serve as the framework and vocabulary of the OVAL Language. These schemas correspond to the three steps of the assessment process: an OVAL System Characteristics schema for representing system information, an OVAL Definition schema for expressing a specific machine state, and an OVAL Results schema for reporting the results of an assessment.

Content written in the OVAL Language is located in one of the many repositories found within the community. One such repository, known as the OVAL Repository, is hosted by The MITRE Corporation. It is the central meeting place for the OVAL Community to discuss, analyze, store, and disseminate OVAL Definitions. Each definition in the OVAL Repository determines whether a specified software vulnerability, configuration issue, program, or patch is present on a system.

The information security community contributes to the development of OVAL by participating in the creation of the OVAL Language on the OVAL Developers Forum and by writing definitions for the OVAL Repository through the OVAL Community Forum. An OVAL Board consisting of representatives from a broad spectrum of industry, academia, and government organizations from around the world oversees and approves the OVAL Language and monitors the posting of the definitions hosted on the OVAL Web site. This means that the OVAL, which is funded by [[US-CERT]] at the [[United States Department of Homeland Security|U.S. Department of Homeland Security]] for the benefit of the community, reflects the insights and combined expertise of the broadest possible collection of security and system administration professionals worldwide.

== OVAL Language ==

The [http://oval.mitre.org/language/index.html OVAL Language] standardizes the three main steps of the assessment process: representing configuration information of systems for testing; analyzing the system for the presence of the specified machine state (vulnerability, configuration, patch state, etc.); and reporting the results of this assessment.

== OVAL Repository ==

The [http://oval.mitre.org/repository/index.html OVAL Repository] is the central meeting place for the OVAL Community to discuss, analyze, store, and disseminate OVAL Definitions. Other repositories in the community also host OVAL content, which can include OVAL System Characteristics files and OVAL Results files as well as definitions.

OVAL is a result of the collaborative efforts of the [[MITRE|MITRE not-for-profit corporation]], along with broad participation from the information security community, including representatives from numerous organizations such as operating system and security tool vendors, academic institutions, and government. MITRE maintains OVAL and moderates Board discussions and the Community Forum discussion list. OVAL is sponsored by the [[US-CERT]] at the [[United States Department of Homeland Security|U.S. Department of Homeland Security]].

==External links==