Rule Documentation
Rule Documentation is the meta-data that explains a rule. Rule documentation is meta-data that you manually enter as values for specified attributes. The data is uniquely associated with the rule for its lifetime, so when the policy or rule is modified, the meta-data is not subject to modified rule numbers or other transient data. Rule documentation is associated with a rule, independent of any revisions of that rule.
Rule Documentation can be used to support your most important firewall administration tasks, like PCI compliance. Rules that don't meet PCI specifications must be justified. Security Manager’s rule documentation feature is the repository for that justification.
Rule documentation consists of values for the following fields.
- Date Created
- Date of Last Revision
- Change Control Number
- Last Updated Date
- Business Justification
- Owner
- Expiration Date
- Business Unit
- Requestor Unit
You can use Rule Documentation to track rules with upcoming expiration dates. Add an Expiration attribute to a rule to note that it should expire on June 1. Then, set up a weekly Rule Expiration Report. When the report runs the week of June 1, it will list that rule as ready for expiration.
You can also extend Security Manager’s alerting capabilities beyond device-level notifications. Add the Alert on Change attribute to a rule that permits only certain services to the PCI zone. Security Manager will immediately notify you if additional services are added to the rule that might jeopardize PCI compliance.
Rule Documentation may be available as the primary output (for example, the Expired Rules Report) and an optional output of several reports (for example, Current Policy Report). For more information, see the About Reports topic.