IBM Tivoli and Cisco - Manual (Page 36)

18 Building a Network Access Control Solution with IBM Tivoli and Cisco Systems
Port details and communication flows between Security Compliance Manager
server and client can be found in “Security Compliance Manager server and
client” on page 450.
Details of the activities performed by server and client include:
Security Compliance Manager server
– Provides an interface for defining complex policies that specify conditions
that should exist on a client.
– Manages
when
the security compliance data is collected and which clients
collect what kind of data using the data collection components.
– Determines
what
security compliance data is collected, and how to
interpret the data using the compliance management components.
– Stores the security compliance data received from the clients in a central
database and provides the available data to users through the
administration console and administration commands.
– Provides security violation details as a basis for the compliance report
components.
Security Compliance Manager client
– Collects information about its environment required to assess compliance
with the security policy at a predefined schedule. Using different
collectors
, this data is sent back to the Security Compliance Manager
server. With new
posture collectors
introduced with Security Compliance
Manager Fix Pack 2, the data is stored locally in a posture cache.
– If enabled for NAC, the client performs a local compliance assessment
using the security policy based on the data from the posture cache. It then
provides the posture assessment data to the Cisco Trust Agent via posture
plug-in for further processing.
– Receives the network admission decision from either the Cisco Secure
Access Control Server (ACS) via Cisco Trust Agent (in case of using the
NAC Framework solution) or the Clean Access Server (CAS) via the Clean
Access Agent (in case of using the NAC Appliance solution) and presents
current status information using a GUI. It displays the compliance status
and posture data, and enables re-initiating the compliance scanning
process.
– On user request, it can initiate an automated remediation process.
More information about Tivoli Security Compliance Manager can be found in the
IBM Redbook Deployment Guide Series: IBM Tivoli Security Compliance
Manager, SG24-6450.