Support for National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-131a

You can configure IBM® Sterling Control Center Monitor to support NIST SP800-131a. There are limitations on some connections when you configure IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor to support NIST SP800-131a.

NIST SP800-131a is a US government computer security standard that is used to accredit cryptographic modules. There are three modes when you run SP800-131a in IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor: off, transition, and strict. You must add an entry to your IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor engine.properties to run SP800-131a. The default entry is com.ibm.jsse2.sp800-131=off. To access the IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor engine.properties file, in the web console, go to your user ID, then click Menu button () > System Settings > Properties > engine.properties.

The following information is important about IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor NIST SP800-131a compliance:
  • For compatibility with an earlier version of IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor, the new SHA-2 algorithm applies only to new passwords or any reset passwords.
  • Running in SP800-131a transition mode means dropping SSLv3 and only TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, or TLS 1.2 is allowed in a secure connection. Running in SP800-131a strict mode means only TLS 1.2 is allowed in a secure connection. For more information, see NIST SP800-131a security standards.
  • Ensure IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor V6.0 runs with the default bundled IBM JRE 7 for comprehensive NIST SP800-131a support.

Limitations

The following products do not support Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 and are limitations to NIST SP800-131a support with IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor:
  • Oracle databases
  • Microsoft SQL Server databases
Important: IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor engine in a non-secure connection, or when IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor does not run under the SP800-131a strict or transition modes.
For more information about the SP 800 series of computer security publications, see NIST security standards.