Finally, on August 27, 2010, Mitre’s log standard, Common Event Expression Architecture Overview was released. The goal of CEE is to standardize event logs to simplify collection, correlation, and reporting which will drive down the costs of implementing and operating Log Management controls and improve audit and event analysis.
At present there are no accepted log standards. Each commercial application and security product implements logs in a proprietary way. In addition, the most commonly used log transport protocol, syslog, is unreliable since it’s usually implemented on UDP. The custom application environment is even worse as there are no accepted standards to guide application developers’ implementation of logs for audit and event management.
Why after ten years of log management efforts are there still no standards? In my opinion, it’s because government agencies and enterprises have not recognized that they are indirectly bearing the costs of the lack of standardization. Now that log management has become mandatory for compliance and strongly recommended for effective cyber defense, organizations will realize the need for log standardization. Initially, it’s going to be up to the Federal Government and large enterprises to force CEE compatibility as a requirement of purchase in order to get product manufacturers to adhere to CEE. The log management vendors will embrace CEE once they see product manufacturers using it.
Here is the Common Event Expression Architecture Overview (CEE AO) Abstract:
This Common Event Expression (CEE) Architecture defines the structure and components that comprise the CEE event log standard. This architecture was developed by MITRE, in collaboration with industry and government, and builds upon the Common Event Expression Whitepaper [1]. This document defines the CEE Architecture for an open, practical, and industry-accepted event log standard. This document provides a high-level overview of CEE along with details on the overall architecture and introduces each of the CEE components including the data dictionary, syntax encodings, event taxonomies, and profiles. The CEE Architecture is the first in a collection of documents and specifications, whose combination provides the necessary pieces to create the complete CEE event log standard.
KEYWORDS: CEE, Logs, Event Logs, Audit Logs, Log Analysis, Log Management, SIEM
- Common Log Syntax (CLS) – how the event and event data is represented. The event syntax is what an event producer writes and what an event consumer processes.
- CEE Dictionary – defines a collection of event fields and value types that can be used within event records to specify the values of an event property associated with a specific event instance.
- CEE Taxonomy – defines a collection of “tags” that can be used to categorize events. Its goal is to provide a common vocabulary, through sets of tags, to help classify and relate records that pertain to similar types of events.
- Common Event Log Recommendations (CELR) – provides recommendations to developers and implementers of applications or systems as to which events and fields should be recorded in certain situations and what log messages should be recorded for various circumstances. CELR provides this guidance in the form of a machine-readable profile. The CELR also defines a function – a group of event structures that comprise a certain capability. For example, a “firewall” function can be defined consisting of “connection allow” and “connection block” event structures. Similarly, an “authentication management” function can be composed of “account logon,” “account logoff,” “session started,” and “session stopped.”
- Common Log Transport (CLT) – provides the technical support necessary for an improved log transport framework. A good framework requires more than just standardized event records, support is needed for international string encodings, standardized event record interfaces, and reliable, verifiable log trails. In addition to the application support, the CLT event streams supplement the CLS event record encodings to allow systems to share event records securely and reliably.
CEE holds the promise of driving down the costs of implementing Log Management systems and improving the quality of audit and event analysis. However, there is still much work to be done for example in defining Taxonomies and defining and testing interoperability at the Transport and Syntax levels.
Mitre has had mixed results over the years in it’s efforts to standardize security processes. CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) has been it’s biggest success as virtually all vulnerability publishers use CVE numbers. CEE is much more ambitious though and will require more money and resources than Mitre is accustomed to having at its disposal.
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