Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
of certain parts of the architecture; in addition, its' modular structure permits inde-
pendence of implementation, provided that the interfaces between the architecture
modules are well-defined.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: the next section gives an overview
of the prerequisite information about IS management standards and the ontological
paradigm, which will be the enablers for our approach. In section 3 we define an
architecture and its components, while in section 4 we present the IS security man-
agement framework. In section 5 we present related work to our research and, finally,
our conclusions and further work in section 6.
2 Background
2.1 Common Information Model
The Common Information Model (CIM) [3] is a conceptual information model, which
developed by Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) for describing computing
and business entities in Internet, enterprise and service provider environments. The
CIM is a hierarchical, object-oriented architecture that makes it comparatively straight-
forward to track, and depict the complex interdependencies and associations among
different managed objects. Such interdependencies may include those between logical
network connections and underlying physical devices, or those of an e-commerce
transaction and the web and database servers on which it depends. The CIM does not
require any particular instrumentation or repository format, attempting to unify and
extend the existing instrumentation and management standards (SNMP, DMI, CMIP,
etc.) using object-oriented constructs and design. While CIM is an evolving standard,
there are several commercial implementations from vendors like HP and Dell [3].
Management schemas are the building blocks for management platforms and ma-
nagement applications, such as device configuration, performance management, and
change management. The CIM Schema supplies a set of classes with properties and
associations that provide a well-understood conceptual framework, within which it is
possible to organize the available information about the managed environment. The
CIM Schema is the combination of the Core and Common Models.
Core Model:
The core model captures notions that are applicable to all areas of mana-
gement. The core model is a set of classes, associations, and properties that provide a
basic vocabulary for describing managed systems, representing a starting point for de-
termining how to extend the common schema.
Common Models:
The Common Models are information models that capture notions
that are common to particular management areas, but independent of any particular
technology or implementation. Examples of common models include systems, appli-
cations, networks and devices. The classes, properties, associations and methods in
the common models are intended to provide a view of the area that is detailed enough
to use as a basis for program design and, in some cases, implementation.
Extension Schema:
Extension schemas represent extensions of the common models. It
is expected that the common models will evolve as a result of the promotion of ob-
jects and properties defined in the extension schemas [3].
