BigFix

  29 minute read  

Introduction and Overview

BigFix is one of the leading endpoint management and security platforms. It quickly identifies and discovers information about endpoints, patches operating systems and monitors the inventory continuously to ensure compliance of endpoints in the infrastructure. BigFix aims at keeping the endpoints secure by ensuring they are patched on the network. Unpatched systems are a big threat to organizations as hackers frequently look for ways to leverage known vulnerabilities for malicious activities. It has a rich set of device attributes gathered from the agents running on an endpoint. These attributes can be used by ClearPass Policy Manager to get more context for the endpoint trying to connect onto the network. Unpatched or non-compliant systems can be sent to a Quarantine zone to ensure they do not have access to valuable assets on the network. This integration guide covers the deployment and configuration of a ClearPass Extension to interface with BigFix. The Extension leverages BigFix APIs to obtain attributes associated with an endpoint. This allows the Extension to provide the following integration capabilities.

1. Periodic Poll: enable periodic polling of endpoints in BigFix with a valid mac address. This allows Policy Manager to access a number ofendpoint attributes which can be leveraged for creating policies. For example

   a. Check if the endpoint is known to BigFix

   b. Check if the Last Update was less than 7 days

   c. Check if the endpoint has been locked by BigFix

2. Authorization source: Trigger the Extension to get the attributes for the authenticated endpoint, this query can be based upon the mac-address or the IP address of the endpoint.

Pictorial View of the Integration

Software Requirements

The minimum software version required for CPPM is 6.11.0 . At the time of writing, version 6.11.10 is available as the long supported release and 6.12.4 is available as the short supported release. CPPM runs on hardware appliances with pre-installed software or as a Virtual Machine under the following hypervisors. Hypervisors that run on a client computer such as VMware Player are not supported.

• VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 7.0 U3c and 8.0

• Windows Server 2019 with Hyper‑V and Windows Server 2022 with Hyper‑V.

• KVM on CentOS Stream 8, CentOS Stream 9, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

ClearPass Installation and Deployment Guide

This document assumes your ClearPass environment is already configured and operational. If you require assistance with basic deployment, refer to the following deployment guide:

https://arubanetworking.hpe.com/techdocs/ClearPass/6.11/Installation-Guide/Default.htm

ClearPass Extensions

The integration between ClearPass Policy Manager and external systems is driven through a ClearPass capability known as Extensions, a sub-component of the ClearPass Exchange Integration framework. ClearPass Extensions are micro-services running on top of the base ClearPass platform. These micro-services enable HPE Aruba Networking to deliver new features outside of the main software release cycle and facilitate a faster time to market for specific features and integrations. Configuration and control of ClearPass Extensions is accomplished through the ClearPass Guest GUI, as covered later in this document.

Installing Extension

ClearPass Extensions are easy to install from the ClearPass Extensions Store. In a cluster, ClearPass Extensions can be installed on a subscriber independently of the publisher. Multiple copies of the same extension can be installed if needed as well.

Access to the extension store

Access the Extension Store to download and install ClearPass extensions. The Extension store utilizes the same HPE Passport account credentials used to validate support entitlement in the Software Updates Por- tal. This is configured under Administration > Agents and Software Updates > Software Updates as shown below. Ensure that valid HPE Passport credentials have been entered in these fields to enable Ex- tension download capabilities.

Installing the Extension from Store

Extensions are installed from the extension page in ClearPass Guest, as shown below. Access it from Guest > Administration > Extensions

From here, click on ‘Install Extension’, and the search box below appears.

Enter “Intune” and click on ‘Search’, see the example below.

Click on the extension name and then click “Install.”

In the “Install Extension” dialog box, set the IP address if necessary, as described in section “Extensions and IP address configuration support” below. Do not check the box to start the extension at this time. Click the “Install” button.

In this example, we’ve not entered an IP address for the extension to use, if there is intent to use the extension as an authorization source set this value and ensure its set the same on all nodes where the Extension is deployed.

The extension will download and appear in a “Stopped” state. Notice the options to Start, Delete, Reinstall, Show Logs, and view Configuration. Click on “Configuration” to view settings.

After the extension has been installed, proceed to configure the extension

A copy of the default Extension configuration is shown above, this will need to be modified for your deployment.

Extensions and web proxy support

Extensions support communications with 3^rd parties via a web proxy. This adds incremental proxy functionality. If a proxy is defined in ClearPass Policy Manager, then an extension will inherit that configuration. See later in the document on how to disable the proxy inherited configuration.

Extensions and IP address configuration support

ClearPass uses a non-externally routed IP address range to communicate with the Extension. The default is 172.17.0.0/16. You may configure a different range, if desired. This is especially useful when deploying extensions across nodes within a cluster where there is the requirement for a fixed consistent IP address for the extension across the cluster.

Changing the “Extensions Network Address” range is only necessary if either the ClearPass MGMT or DATA interface are using an IP address in the extension default range of 172.17.x.x/12, or if ClearPass needs to communicate with some external device in that range.

To Configure the base Extension IP subnet within Policy Manager navigate to Administration > Server Manager > Server Configuration [chose your node] Service Parameters [ClearPass system service].

The default configuration used for v3 of the extension is below.

{

"logLevel": "INFO",

"verifySSLCerts": true,

"bigFixHost": "",

"bigFixPort": 52311,

"bigFixUserName": "",

"bigFixPassword": "********",

"bigFixAdditionalProperties": [],

"bigFixIncludePatchSummary": false,

"enableEndpointCache": false,

"cacheExpirationMinutes": 30,

"enableCacheSync": false,

"cacheSyncSchedule": "0 5 * * 1",

"syncOnStart": false,

"cppmUserName": "",

"cppmPassword": "********",

"bypassProxy": false,

"enableStats": false

}

Each of the attributes are explained in the table below in detail.

Configuration attribute	Description	Example/Values
bigFixHost	The host name or IP address of your BigFix system.	192.168.1.10 bigfix.arubasecurity.net
bigFixPort	The port number for the BigFix API.	Default: 52311
bigFixUserName	The user name of an account in BigFix with access to Computer Properties and the Query API.	Username for account created (see Appendix E)
bigFixPassword	The password for the user entered in the bigFixUserName setting.	Password for account created (see Appendix E)
bigFixAdditional-Properties	A JSON array of additional properties to pull from BigFix. Default properties are included automatically and cannot be removed. Additional values may be added.	["Property Name", "Property Name"]
bigFix-IncludePatchSummary	Enables the extension to add patch summary information to device attributes. Patch summary is the numeric count of missing patches classified as Critical, Important, Moderate, and Low.	true / false
enableEndpointCache	Enables the endpoint cache process when performing a single MAC Address or IP Address based device lookup.	true / false
enableExpirationMinutes	The amount of time an endpoint's data is considered "valid" when using enableEndpointCache.	Default: 30
enableCacheSync	Enables the caching of all available endpoints in BigFix. Uses differential updates — only systems that checked in since the last update are refreshed.	true / false
cacheSyncSchedule	CRON-formatted schedule for updating the endpoint cache. See Appendix C for more details.	"0 5 * * 1" (Updates every Monday at 05:00)
syncOnStart	Starts a cache sync every time the extension is started or restarted.	true / false
cppmUserName	The user name of an Admin user in ClearPass. Used for device profiling.	Administrator username
cppmPassword	The password for the user entered in cppmUserName.	Administrator password
logLevel	Logging level for troubleshooting.	"DEBUG", "INFO", "WARN", "ERROR"
bypassProxy	If a proxy is configured, bypass it for API calls to BigFix.	true / false
enableStats	Enable basic extension statistics dashboard.	true / false

When leveraging the sync capabilities of the Extension to get the device attributes from BigFix, use the attribute enableCacheSync and specify cacheSyncSchedule. These 2 attributes are leveraged for periodic poll of endpoints from BigFix. The syncOnStart attribute can be leveraged as well to sync everything upon the start or re-start of the extension.

When doing single device lookups by MAC Address, if enableEndpointCache is true, the mac address will be looked up in ClearPass to see if the information for the computer is in the database and up-to-date as determined by the cacheExpirationMinutes, this being the amount of time an endpoints data will be considered "fresh" when using the enableEndpointCache option. If false, all requests will be sent to BigFix.

The bigFixUserName and bigFixPassword are credentials of the operator on BigFix which will give access to endpoints discovered by BigFix via REST APIs. A default administrator account can be used for this setup or a separate local operator can be created. For steps on creating this operator on BigFix, see next page.

The cppmUserName and cppmPassword should be for an Administrator account. The device profiling attributes obtained from BigFix need to be written into the endpoint repository leveraging a profiling APIs which requires an Administrator account.

A ClearPass Network Administrator account can be created under Administration > Users and Privileges > Admin Users. Click on Add. A user with the following Privilege Level needs to be created.

A Network Administrator privilege level is sufficient for the action of adding device profiling information into the endpoint database of ClearPass.

A copy of the BigFix Extension with the desired configuration is shown below, this has to be modified for your as a minimum. Include the bigFixHost, bigFixPort, bigFixUserName, bigFixPassword, cppmUserName and cppmPassword that will be specific to your environment.

Change or include any other values based on the description of each in the above table as necessary to your deployment. Select Restart and click on Save Changes to restart the extension.

An optional but extremely powerful parameter to note is bigFixAdditionalProperties. By default, the parameter has the value of [] which basically indicates that the sync would only get the default attributes.

However, BigFix includes an extensive list of attributes from an endpoint. Some of these attributes might not be very useful or relevant for ClearPass and would increase the payload to be ingested from BigFix. Customization options are available with this parameter so that an administrator can identify and pull values apart from the default which are important in their environment. Navigate to the BigFix Extension and click on Show Details as shown below.

Click on the Extension URL under the details. This gives a list of all the attributes that can be fetched from BigFix. If the information is available for the endpoint on BigFix, ClearPass can pull it.

The URL above gives a long list of available attributes. The ones marked in bold are mandatory and fetched by default. If any of the other properties are useful in a particular environment, they can be fetched using the bigFixAdditionalProperties parameter. They can be then be leveraged in ClearPass Policy.

For example, here we have added BIOS and Client Settings to the list of additional attributes that need to be fetched from BigFix.

Following is the change in the Extension configuration. Remember this change is only required if additional attributes need to be fetched from BigFix. This can be totally skipped for the basic setup of this integration.

{ "bigFixHost": "10.2.98.40",

"bigFixPort": 52311,

"bigFixUserName": "admin",

"bigFixPassword": "********",

"bigFixAdditionalProperties": [

"Client Settings", "BIOS"

],

"bigFixIncludePatchSummary": true,

"enableEndpointCache": true,

"enableCacheSync": true,

"cacheSyncSchedule": "0 5 * * 1",

"syncOnStart": true,

"cppmUserName": "admin",

"cppmPassword": "********",

"verifySSLCerts": false,

"logLevel": "INFO",

"bypassProxy": false,

"enableStats": false

}

Ensure the Extension is restarted upon a configuration change. After the restart of the extension, click on Show Logs.

The above log states that the Extension has sync’d the endpoint data from BigFix. The above steps sync endpoint details at the time of starting the Extension and then regular updates are fetched at the interval specified by cacheSyncSchedule, see Appendix C for more information on configuring this value. Please note the IP address of the Extension. This will be used in the next section where we leverage BigFix Extension as an Authorization source. A sample of attributes fetched for an endpoint is shown below.

Configure ClearPass Policy Manager

Multiple methods exist for how ClearPass can utilize the returned data from HCL BigFix, such as:

Ensure that the endpoint is managed by BigFix. If not, perhaps restrict access for the device on the

Corporate Network with a role that only allows the user to remediate and install the BigFix endpoint agent. This provides a controlled environment where all endpoints are known to be in line with corporate security policy, around patching and OS updates.

Check if the endpoint has the latest BigFix agent installed. If not, perhaps quarantine the device with the option to remediate and install an updated client.

More importantly validate whether the endpoint is missing any patches, subdivided into Critical, Important, Low and Moderate, separate policy can be written against any of the counts.

Additionally, policy can be written against a wealth of additional endpoint attributes that are important to you, if for example you wanted to check the BiOS version of devices connecting, you can have BigFix return that data which can then be compared in policy to decide if an endpoint maybe vulnerable to a BiOS exploit.

As mentioned previously, the extension can be run in two modes.

Periodic Sync Mode: Using stored attributes

The Extension can sync data from BigFix periodically, write this data into the ClearPass EndpointDB, then use the EndpointDB as an authorization source. Be aware that this data will not be completely ‘real-time,’ but may be adequate for many if not all use cases.

Here’s an example of a ClearPass Role Mapping Policy that utilizes these BigFix Endpoint Attributes.

HTTP Authorization Source Mode: A Real-Time authorization check

In this mode we build an HTTP authorization source, add it to an existing Service Policy, then process the returned data from BigFix, typically utilizing a role-mapping or an enforcement profile action. Note that with an HTTP authorization source configured in a Service, ClearPass will make a call to BigFix every time an authenticating device matches this Service, unless the cacheExpirationMinutes timer for the endpoint is still qualifying the data as “fresh”. Making real-time API calls to BigFix every time a device authenticates may not be scalable if there are network delay constraints or you have a high number of authentications/sec.

The HTTP Authorization source is the conduit between the extension and ClearPass Policy Manager. It’s through the authorization source that we expose the BigFix endpoint attributes to Policy Manager so they can be used to perform role-mapping or an enforcement policy action.

Defining a BigFix HTTP Authorization Source

The first step is to add the authorization source. Under Configuration > Authentication > Sources, click Add and choose type HTTP.

Provide a Name for the Authentication Source and click Next. On the Primary Tab, provide the IP Address of the extension as discussed earlier. Ensure a trailing ‘/mac/’ is added after the extension IP address.

Click on Next. This will advance to the Attributes Tab where you must configure at least one attribute. Click on Add More Filters. Provide a Name for the filter and then a Filter Query. The query is indexed off the MAC Address of the endpoint. Copy the line below and paste into the Filter Query box.

%{Connection:Client-Mac-Address-Hyphen}

The data returned from BigFix can be extensive, but not all the data is relevant to making a security policy decision about the endpoint. Choose which attributes are required for your enforcement profile. As an example, the filter shown below has eleven attributes configured. Your filter may differ depending on the use-cases you are trying to meet. Remember if you want to check additional attributes via the HTTP authZ then they need to be added in the array un the extension under bigFixAdditionalProperties.

Using Results from the BigFix HTTP Auth Source

Below is an example of using these attributes in a ClearPass Role Mapping Policy.

This is just a simple configuration to show what you can do with the returned attributes.

Previously we discussed about an optional parameter called bigFixAdditionalProperties. It is used to fetch more attributes than the default ones available above. In order to use that attribute with Authorization source it is necessary to add the same using the option “Add More Filters”. Without doing this, it will not be available for use with Authorization.

Let’s look at the example below where the BigFix Missing Patches-Critical attribute fetched is mapped within the Authorization source as shown below.

Let’s look at the service configuration within ClearPass to see this HTTP source being leveraged as an Authorization source within a service. Ensure to check the option for enabling Authorization.

The next step is to add this source under Authorization. The Authorization tab for the service is shown below.

Finally, the authorization source is leveraged under Enforcement for the policies to be defined. A sample Enforcement Policy for this service is shown below.

In the above policy if BigFix marks an endpoint as Locked, the endpoint is assigned a Quarantine role with restricted Access. A full access role is granted only if the Endpoint “Is Found” by BigFix. If not, a default of [Deny Access Profile] is assigned.

Appendix A – Troubleshooting and Support

Here we list some basic troubleshooting steps. If you need any help beyond this, please reach out to HPE Aruba Networking Support.

Check API Access Application Control restrictions

If you’ve previously hardened your ClearPass deployment with Application Access Controls, it’s possible that the Extension will not work. Reviewing the Extension Log might show something like the following after immediately starting the Extension. This likely indicates the ClearPass Application API’s are in place.

Example of Extension authorization failure due to Policy Manager Application Control:

[2020-03-16T15:42:21.083] [INFO] Intune - Server listening on port 80.

[2020-03-16T15:42:21.243] [DEBUG] Intune - Request “GET ‘https://172.17.0.1/api/server/version’” took 51.91ms.

[2020-03-16T15:42:21.245] [DEBUG] Intune - <!DOCTYPE html><html>

<head>

<title>

Error 403 (Forbidden)

</title>

<script language=“javascript”>

function reloadPage() {

var locHref = window.location.protocol + “//” + window.location.hostname;

window.location.href = locHref;

}

</script>

To resolve this issue, add the IP address of the Extension to the list of nodes permitted to access the API by navigating to Administration > Server Manager > Server Configuration {choose your node} > Network

Checking on the Extension Service

The ClearPass Extensions are supported by a system service which must be running.

Restarting this service will affect all deployed and running extensions.

To check on the state of the Extension Service, or to restart the service, go to Administration > Server Manager > Server Configuration > [SERVER] > Service Control. By default this service is automatically started.

Extensions and web proxy / firewall whitelisting

If ClearPass Policy Manager has been configured with a proxy, it’s still possible that domain whitelists are required, the same for some datacenter firewall to allow the installation of Extensions. Some enterprise customers maintain a whitelist of domain that are allowed to transit the proxy/firewall. The underlying docker configuration process uses standard docker registry access to pull images (hosted in docker hub). In general, the following hosts are used:

This is all also geo dependent to some degree and based on various AWS services, so AWS redirects and geo location services will vary. Finally, this all runs via standard HTTPS (port 443).

Extension Logs/Enable Debugging

If you have a requirement to access and view the logs from the Extension, you can turn on different logging levels from the Extension GUI. Adjust the logLevel to ‘DEBUG’ and restart the extension as shown below.

Logs can then be viewed from the ‘Show Logs’.

Remember after changing the logging level, as with any extension configuration change the extension will need to be restarted for this change to take effect.

Accessing the extension logs using ‘Collect Logs’ system function

In addition to viewing the logs as shown above, logs can also be collected and examined via the Policy Manager Collect Logs system function (Administration > Server Manager > Server Configuration > [Select SERVER] > Collect Logs). This is extremely useful should you have a need to call for technical assistance.

If the support team needs to investigate a system issue, one of the items they regularly ask for is the system logs to aid with their diagnostic investigation. By default the “logLevel” is set to INFO, but TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL can also be set as required. Any of the levels will display the information for the selected state and lower; if INFO is selected, it will show messages for INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL.

After the logs have been collected, downloaded and expanded, you can locate the extension logs in the following location in the folder structure PolicyManagerLogs > extension > your-extension-id as shown below. Note the file-name is the same as the running instance ID of the extension.

Monitoring extension statistics

There is a way to monitor extension’s critical resource statistics with the configurable parameter added as part of the extension’s configuration. To enable extension statistics set the “enableStats” parameter to true. Remember a restart of the extension is need to activate the change anytime the config is modified.

To navigate to statistics page, click Show Details.

This will show statistics similar to the following:

Monitoring authorization performance

Since we are authorizing against an external system, it could be relevant to monitor the performance of these transactions as you setup and deploy. If you suspect there is a performance issue, ClearPass provides a way to monitor the authorization processing time. The graph below shows an example of this data, navigate to Monitoring > Live Monitor > System Monitor [click on ClearPass Tab, then select [Authorization]….

Appendix B – Considerations for Installing in a Cluster

Extensions are not synced between ClearPass cluster members, and thus must be installed on each member separately.

Some Extensions can run in two modes: Periodic Sync Mode and Authorization Source Mode.

Periodic Sync Mode

If you are configuring the extension to poll external system periodically and utilize the resulting ClearPass Endpoint database during endpoint Authorization, then you only need to install the extension on one cluster member, often the publisher.

You may wish to install the extension on a second cluster member as a backup, but remember that both extensions will individually be updating the endpoint database. You may want to stagger the updates between the two extensions, for example, Subscriber1 updates at the top of the hour and Subscriber2 updates at 30 minutes after the hour.

Also, in this mode there is no need to explicitly enter an IP address during installation. The defaults will suffice and ClearPass will select an IP in the range specified in the server configuration.

HTTP Authorization Source Mode

In this mode we configure an HTTP Auth source that results in a HTTPS call to external system during endpoint authorization. In this deployment model the extension must be installed on every cluster node that process authentications. Also in this scenario every cluster member’s extension must be set to the exact same IP address during installation time, as the HTTP Auth source configuration is propagated globally across all cluster members.

For example, if the extension IP range is 172.17.0.0/16, we would set the extension to 172.17.0.5 on every cluster member during installation of the extension.

While we normally want to avoid duplicate IP addresses in a network, this is not a concern with ClearPass extensions. Each ClearPass node communicates internally only with its own extension, and this traffic is not routed outside of ClearPass.

Subscriber nodes support the same ability as publishers to install an Extension from the Extension store.

Appendix C – endpoint sync schedule settings

The syncSchedule and similar scheduling parameters sets how often ClearPass executes certain actions like syncing or pushing endpoints. This setting is based on a slightly modified version of the CRON job scheduler found in Unix-like operating systems. It can be used to schedule jobs to run periodically at fixed times, dates or intervals.

A ‘cron’ is a job scheduler. Any scheduled task is called a ‘cron job’. The syntax for a cron job schedule is as follows:

In our use of the cron scheduler, we’ve dropped the use of the last instruction ≤command to execute> and use only the time/date functions, see below for a number of examples of scheduling a sync process.

• Schedule a sync to run at 2am daily:- 0 2 * * *

• Schedule a sync to run twice a day at 5am and 5pm:- 0 5,17 * * *

• Schedule a sync to run on every Sunday at 5pm:- 0 17 * * sun

• Schedule a sync to run every 30 minutes:- */30 * * * *

• Schedule a sync to run at 5pm on selected days:- 0 17 * * sun,fri

You can see from the above that the scheduling process is extremely flexible, alternatively https://crontab.guru/ is a great page for learning more about CRON scheduling.

Appendix D – Extension performance optimizations

Extensions are a critical part of ClearPass deployments today and with the increased dependency on extension interactions that involve periodic polling or real-time lookups, here are some of the best practice recommendations around optimizing overall performance when using extensions:

• If the extension is used to periodically poll external systems and populate endpoint repository, ensure that it is not installed in all the nodes in the cluster. Ideally these type of extensions should only be installed on the publisher node since only publisher node can add endpoint entries to the database. For redundancy, it can be installed on another additional node but it is recommended to stagger the polling interval so that both do not attempt to poll and update endpoint database at the same time.

  Example: 0 * * * *, This cron job runs at minute 0 of every hour (e.g., 00:00, 01:00, 02:00, etc.).

    30 * * * *, This cron job runs at minute 30 of every hour (e.g., 00:30, 01:30, 02:30, etc.).
  

• If the extension is used for looking up attributes from external systems in real time during authentication, it should be installed in all the nodes handling authentication. Note that the context server config is replicated from the publisher. When using extension for real time lookup, ensure that the extension has the same IP address in all the cluster nodes.

• If the extension is expected to do both real-time lookup and periodic polling, ensure that polling is enabled only on the publisher while the extension in subscribers can have the polling disabled by setting the “enableSyncAll” attribute to false.

     "enableSyncAll": false,
  

• Some 3rd party systems support fetching delta updates vs fetching all of the device information every polling cycle. The extensions that support fetching delta updates are: Workspace ONE Crowdstrike Falcon Microsoft Intune Mosyle SentinelOne Service Now

  For these extensions, the syncUpdatedOnly attribute should be set to true in extension config so that the number of DB updates in ClearPass is minimized

    "syncUpdatedOnly": true,
  

  For extensions that do not support syncUpdatedOnly, ensure that the sync interval is not aggressive. We recommend syncing at most twice a day and that too during off peak hours whenever a full sync is performed.

• Some 3rd party systems can be very noisy in terms of attribute updates. There could be certain attributes that keep changing every sync interval like “Free Memory in Bytes”, “Last Check in Time” etc. There is no value in updating endpoints when such trivial attributes change for the device. Hence it is recommended to use “ignoreEndpointDifferences” attribute in extension configuration to ignore change in attributes that you do not care about in terms of ClearPass policies.

  You can review the Audit Viewer in ClearPass under Monitoring > Audit Viewer to see what attributes are being updated for endpoints to check if there are unnecessary updates.

  Sample for JAMF extension:

    "ignoreEndpointDifferences": "Last Update, Report Date UTC, Last Contact Time UTC, Last Inventory Update UTC, Last Reported IP, IP Address",
  

  Default for Microsoft Intune extension:

    "ignoreEndpointDifferences": "Last Sync Date Time, Free Storage Space in Bytes",
  

• To further optimize the number of endpoints being updated in ClearPass, you can specify which attributes are being used in the ClearPass policies so that only changes to those attributes would trigger an update to the endpoint. This is done by listing out the specific attributes under endpointAttributes in extension configuration.

  Sample for JAMF extension:

    "endpointAttributes": "Group names, MDM Enabled, Managed, Remote Managed, Supervised, Serial Number",
  

• Setup extension to restart unless it was intentionally stopped. A restart policy can be defined in extension configuration to ensure that the extension starts up automatically after server reboots and such. Restart policy of “unless-stopped” would ensure the extension always starts up unless it was manually stopped.

  “restartPolicy”: “no” — The extension will not be automatically restarted after the server is restarted.

  “restartPolicy”: “always” — The extension will always be restarted after the server is restarted.

  “restartPolicy”: “unless-stopped” — The extension will be restarted unless it was stopped prior to the server restart, in which case it will maintain that state.

  “restartPolicy”: “on-failure:N” — If the extension fails to restart, the value for “N” specifies the number of times the extension should try to restart. If you do not provide a value for “N”, the default value will be “0”.

  The “restartPolicy” parameter is not present by default in extension configurations. When it is not present, if the system is restarted a default policy is applied to the extension to maintain the state it was in before the restart. If the “restartPolicy” parameter is added to the configuration but later removed, the extension will then revert to the default restart policy.

Appendix E BigFix configuration

It is assumed that a working BigFix environment is leveraged for this extension. The configuration of BigFix is beyond the scope of this guide.

The Extension configuration requires a valid BigFix administrator account to leverage BigFix APIs. This account can be created on BigFix as shown below.

Go to Tools Menu on top of your screen and click on Create Operator . Add a user with credentials as shown below.

The next step involves assigning permissions for this account. It is important that the account has the permissions for Can use REST API. Also, the account should have a list of Administered Computers". In our lab, a user with restricted permissions was used and should be preferred. For details on this, please contact your local BigFix representative. Under the “Details” tab for this account, provide restricted access as shown below.

If there are permission issues when trying to fetch computers, one can check or troubleshoot by giving this account the Master Operator permission as shown below or use an administrator account for testing only.

Navigate to the “Computer Assignments” tab. Add the computers in scope for this Extension or select all computers. It is important that after the settings are saved, the “Administered Computers” tab gets updated. An empty list of Administered Computers would always result in extension fetching no computers.

Further restrictions can be assigned to this account by granting a Reader permission only to the sites within the scope.

Appendix F XMLs

The Authentication Source can be easily imported into ClearPass so that it can be leveraged to use the BigFix

Extension as an Authorization source in a service. The XML file can be downloaded from https://github.com/aruba/clearpass-exchange-snippets/tree/master/extensions/ibm-bigfix

• Download the XML profile > “clearpass-extension_tenable-securitycenter_enf-profile.xml”.

• Open this file in your favorite editor.

• Use the Find and Replace feature of the editor to replace "<BigFix Extension IP>" with the actual IP address of the BigFix Extension configured. Refer Figure 24.

• Save the file and Import.

The file can be imported from Configuration > Enforcement >Profiles.

The above action will import an ‘basic’ HTTP Authentication Source in ClearPass which can be leveraged as an Authorization source for a service, you may want to add additional fields/attributes as previously discussed.