User Guide for Cisco Security MARS Global Controller, Release 4.2.x
Glossary

Table Of Contents


Glossary


#
 
5-tuple
(Quintuple) The five pieces of data found within all IP-based network packets: source IP address, source port, destination IP address, destination port, and protocol. You can define inspection rules, queries, and reports using the data found in the 5-tuple.


A
(\
Access IP Address
This is the IP address that MARS uses to connect to the device and to get its configuration information. MARS needs this address for NAT-related session correlation, attack path calculation, and mitigation enter access information.
Activate
Making changes or edits known to the MARS after submitting changes.


D
 
Devices
The hosts and reporting devices present in the system.
Discovery
The act of identifying, either automatically or manually, devices in networks.
Dynamic Vulnerability Scanning
The MARS STM probes selected networks, and their components, for vulnerabilities.


E
 
Event
A security event reported to the MARS STM appliance. Events have: types, sources, destinations, reporting devices, etc.
Event Types
Groups of similar security events. An event type is the normalized signature from a reporting device.


F
 
False Positive
An event that resembles a valid security threat, but is not.
Firing Events
An event that contributed to a rule firing.


I
 
Incident
Incidents are collections of events and sessions that meet the criteria for a rule, having helped to cause it to fire.
Incident Instances
An instance of an incident.


M
 
MI B
management information base
mitigate
To stop a detected attack or anomaly. The method of mitigation varies based on network composition and configuration.


O
 
Offset
The offset of a firing event is the line number of the rule criteria that this firing event matches.


P
 
Pre NAT Source Address
Session endpoints.
Post NAT Source Address
The source as appearing at the destination.
Post NAT Destination Address
Session endpoints.
Pre NAT Destination Address
The destination as appearing at the source.


Q
 
Query
A user-defined request to the database for information.


R
 
Report
A user-defined request to the database on an automatic or on-demand basis.
Reporting Device
A discovered device that reports information - usually in the form of logs - to a MARS STM appliance.
Reporting IP Address
This is the IP address as it appears to MARS. This address is where the logs (syslog, SNMP traps, LEA) come from.
Rule
The sub-set of events that contributed to the incidents of the specified rules firing.


S
 
Service
A protocol and range of IP addresses.
Session
A session is a collection of events that all share a common source and destination, which were reported within a given time window. For example, usually the events in a session map well to the events generated between the opening and closing of a TCP/IP connection.
Sessionize
Combining event data from multiple reporting devices to reconstruct the occurrence of a session. Sessionizing takes two forms: reconstructing a session-oriented protocol, such as TCP, where the initial handshake and the session tear down and reconstructing a sessionless protocol, such as UDP, where the initial start and session end times are defined more based on first and last packets tracked within a restricted time period. In other words, packets that fall outside of the time period are considered part of different sessions.


T
 
True Positive
A valid security threat.


U
 
Unreported device
A device from which the MARS Appliance receives events, such as syslog messages, SNMP notifications, or NetFlow events, but the device is not defined in the appliance. Without a definition, MARS is unable to correlate events correctly as it needs to know which message format to use in parsing.


T
 
True Positive
A valid security threat.