An Introduction to Security in a CSM 1.3 for AIX 5L Environment

Chapter 1. Introduction 7

scripts to manage general system conditions with little or no involvement of a

system administrator.

More than 80 predefined conditions are included in AIX 5L Version 5.2. They can

be turned on for monitoring with a few simple commands or just a few clicks in

the Web-Based System Manager (WebSM).

1.2.3 Resource managers (RM)

There is a core set of resource managers (RM) provided by RSCT, and

additional resource managers are provided by CSM for AIX and CSM for Linux.

Resource managers provide low-level instrumentation and control, or act as a

foundation for management applications.

The following are the core resource managers of RSCT:

򐂰 Audit Log resource manager

򐂰 Configuration resource manager

򐂰 Event resource manager

򐂰 File System resource manager

򐂰 Host resource manager

򐂰 Sensor resource manager

1.2.4 Cluster Security Services (CtSec)

Cluster Security Services (CtSec) is a new security infrastructure that is used by

RMC to authenticate a node within the cluster, verifying that the node is who it

says it is.

This is not to be confused with authorization (granting or denying access to

resources), which is handled by RMC.

CtSec uses

credential-based authentication

that enables:

򐂰 A client process to present information to the server that owns the resource to

be accessed in a way that cannot be imitated.

򐂰 A server process to clearly identify the client and the validity of the

information.

Credential-based authentication uses a third party that both the client and the

server trust. In this release, only UNIX host-based authentication is supported.