TAG-Security Security Assessment (TSSA) Process

Goals

The TAG-Security Security Assessment Process (formerly the security review process) is designed to accelerate the adoption of cloud native technologies, based on the below goals and assumptions.

1) Reduce risk across the ecosystem

The primary goal is to reduce the risk from malicious attacks and accidental breaches of privacy. This process supports that goal in two ways:

• A clear and consistent process for communication increases detection & reduces time to resolve known or suspected vulnerability issues
• A collaborative assessment process increases domain expertise within each participating project.

2) Accelerate adoption of cloud native technologies

Security assessments are a necessary, time intensive process. Each company, organization, and project must perform its own assessments to ensure that it meets its unique commitments to its own users and stakeholders. In open source, simply finding security-related information can be overwhelmingly difficult and a time consuming part of the security assessment. The CNCF TAG-Security Security Assessment Process, hereafter “TSSA” Process is intended to enable improved discovery of security information & assist in streamlining internal and external security assessments in multiple ways:

• Consistent documentation reduces assessment time.
• Established baseline of security-relevant information reduced Q&A.
• Clear rubric for security profile enables organizations to align their risk profile with the project’s risk profile and effectively allocate resources (for assessment and needed project contribution).
• Structured metadata allows for navigation, grouping and cross-linking.

We expect that this process will raise awareness of how specific open source projects affect the security of a cloud native system; however, separate activities may be needed to achieve that purpose using materials generated by the TSSA, known as artifacts or the TSSA package.

Outcome

Each project’s TSSA package shall include a description of:

1. the project’s design goals with respect to security
2. any aspects of design and configuration that could introduce risk
3. known limitations, such as expectations or assumptions that aspects of security, whole or in part, are to be handled by upstream or downstream dependencies or complementary software
4. next steps toward increasing security of the project itself and/or increasing the applications of the project toward a more secure cloud native ecosystem

Due to the nature and time frame for the analysis, the TSSA package is not meant to subsume the need for a professional security audit of the code. Audits of implementation-specific vulnerabilities, improper deployment configurations, etc. are not in scope of a TSSA. A TSSA is intended to uncover design flaws, enhance the security mindset of the project, and to obtain a clear, comprehensive articulation of the project’s design goals and aspirations while documenting the intended security properties enforced, fulfilled, or executed by said project.

Benefits of a TSSA

Having your project undergo the TSSA Process is a key step toward eliminating security risks. It allows one to build security as an integral part of a system and to maintain that security over time.

A TSSA has many benefits, creating:

• a measurable security baseline from that point onward,
• exposure and analysis of security issues, including the risk they introduce,
• validation of security awareness and culture among the developers for building secured projects, and
• a documented procedure, for future compliance, audit, or internal assessment

Components of the TSSA package

A complete TSSA package primarily consists of the following items:

• Self-assessment . A written assessment by the project of the project’s current security statue.
• Joint-assessment . A hands-on assessment by both the security reviewers and the project team that includes parts of the self-assessment and expands to include a more comprehensive consideration of the project’s security health. This artifact, coupled with self-assessment provide invaluable information for security auditors as well as end-users.
• Presentation. A security focused presentation of the project by the project team,
• Review the joint README template . This template is used to create a readme at the end of the joint assessment by the security reviewers to provide a high level summary of the joint assessment. It is considered when performing due diligence.

Use of a completed TSSA package

A finalized TSSA package may be used by the community to assist in the contextual review of a project but are not an endorsement of the security of the project, not a security audit of the project, and do not relieve an individual or organization from performing their own due diligence and complying with laws, regulations, and policies.

Draft assessments contain unconfirmed content and are not endorsed as factual until committed to this repository, which requires detailed peer review. Draft documents may also contain speculative content as the project lead or security reviewer is performing an assessment. Draft assessments are only for the purpose of preparing final artifact and are not to be used in any other capacity by the community.

Final slides resulting from the presentation and the project’s joint assessment will be stored in the individual project’s folder with supporting documentation and artifacts from the TSSA. These folders can be found under assessments/projects and clicking on the project name.

Process

Creating the TSSA package is a collaborative process for the benefit of the project and the community, where the primary content is generated by the project lead and revised based on feedback from security reviewers and other members of the TAG.

• If you are interested in a TSSA for your project and you are willing to volunteer as project lead or you are a TAG-Security member and want to recommend a project to assess, please file an issue

See the TSSA guide for more details. To understand how we prioritize TSSAs, see intake process .