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LifeWIRE standardizes and automates configuration management through the use of AD Group Policy objects as well as documentation of all changes to production systems and networks. AD Group Policy objects automatically configure all LifeWIRE systems according to established and tested policies, and are used as part of our Disaster Recovery plan and process.

9.1.1 Applicable Standards from the HITRUST Common Security Framework

• 06 - Configuration Management

9.1.2 Applicable Standards from the HIPAA Security Rule

• 164.310(a)(2)(iii) Access Control & Validation Procedures

1. Microsoft Group Policy Active Directory are used to standardize and automate configuration management.

2. No systems are deployed into LifeWIRE environments without approval of the LifeWIRE CTO.

3. All changes to production systems, network devices, and firewalls are approved by the LifeWIRE CTO before they are implemented to assure they comply with business and security requirements.

4. All changes to production systems are tested before they are implemented in production.

5. Implementation of approved changes are only performed by authorized personnel.

6. Tooling to generate an up-to-date inventory of systems, including corresponding architecture diagrams for related products and services, is hosted on Office 365.

• All systems are categorized as production and utility to differentiate based on criticality.
• The Security Officer maintains scripts to generate inventory lists on demand using APIs provided by each cloud provider.
• These scripts are used to generate the diagrams and asset lists required by the Risk Assessment phase of LifeWIRE’s Risk Management procedures (4.3.1).
• After every use of these scripts, the Security Officer will verify their accuracy by reconciling their output with recent changes to production systems. The Security Officer will address any discrepancies immediately with changes to the scripts.

7. All frontend functionality (developer dashboards and portals) is separated from backend (database and app servers) systems by being deployed on separate servers or containers.

8. All software and systems are tested using unit tests and end to end tests.

9. All committed code is reviewed using pull requests to assure software code quality and proactively detect potential security issues in development.

10. LifeWIRE utilizes development and staging environments that mirror production to assure proper function.

11. LifeWIRE also deploys environments locally using Vagrant to assure functionality before moving to staging or production.

12. All formal change requests require unique ID and authentication.

13. LifeWIRE uses the Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) published by the Defense Information Systems Agency as a baseline for hardening systems.

• Windows-based systems use a baseline Active Directory group policy configuration in conjunction with the Windows Server 2012 STIG.

14. Clocks are continuously synchronized to an authoritative source across all systems using NTP or a platform-specific equivalent. Modifying time data on systems is restricted.

15. Security Officer is responsible for managing and maintaining network equipment. Data center equipment is managed directly, as Security Officer has the only permitted access. LifeWIRE owned laptop computers are managed in conjunction with the assigned employee. A network diagram is maintained by the Security Officer on OneDrive and is updated on any changes to the network configuration and is reveiwed at least every 180 days.

1. Before provisioning any systems, ops team members must file a request in the LifeWIRE Quality Management System.

• Quality Management System access requires authenticated users.
• The CTO grants access to the Quality Management System following the procedures covered in the Access Establishment and Modification section.

2. The CTO, or an authorized delegate of the CTO, must approve the provisioning request before any new system can be provisioned.

3. Once provisioning has been approved, the ops team member must configure the new system according to the standard baseline chosen for the system’s role.

• For Windows systems, we default the machine to use the Active Directory Group Policy setup on the on-premises AD Server along with a baseline install of the OS.

4. If the system will be used to house production data (ePHI), the ops team member must add an encrypted block data volume to the VM during provisioning.

5. Once the system has been provisioned, the ops team member must contact the security team to inspect the new system. A member of the security team will verify that the secure baseline has been applied to the new system, including (but not limited to) verifying the following items:

• Removal of default users used during provisioning.
• Network configuration for system.
• Data volume encryption settings.
• Intrusion detection and virus scanning software installed.
• All items listed below in the operating system-specific subsections below.

6. Once the security team member has verified the new system is correctly configured, the team member must add that system to the Nessus security scanner configuration.

7. The new system may be rotated into production once the CTO verifies all the provisioning steps listed above have been correctly followed and has marked the Issue with the Approved state.

1. Windows systems have their baseline security configuration applied via the combination of Group Policy settings. These baseline settings cover:

• Joining the Windows Domain Controller and applying the Active Directory Group Policy configuration.
• Ensuring that the machine is up-to-date with security patches and is configured to apply patches in accordance with our policies.
• Stopping and disabling any unnecessary OS services.
• Installing and configuring the OSSEC IDS agent.
• Configuring 15-minute session inactivity timeouts.
• Installing and configuring the Avast virus scanner.
• Configuring transport encryption according to the requirements described in 17.9.
• Configuring the system clock, including ensuring that modifying system time cannot be performed by unprivileged users.
• Configuring audit logging as described in the Auditing Policy section.

1. Provisioning management systems such as LDAP/Active Directory servers, or VPN appliances follows the same procedure as provisioning a production system.

2. Critical infrastructure services such as logging, monitoring, LDAP servers, or Windows Domain Controllers must be configured with appropriate states.

3. Critical infrastructure roles applied to new systems must be clearly documented by the ops team member in the DT request.

1. Subsequent changes to already-provisioned systems are unconditionally handled by one of the following methods:

• Configuration changes are determined, approved and applied by the CTO.

2. Configuration changes to AD Group Policy Objects must be initiated by creating a Jira ticket.

• The ops team member will create a JIRA ticket documenting the configuration change.
• The ops team member must test their configuration change locally when possible, or on a development and/or staging sandbox otherwise.
• At least one other ops team member must review the configuration change before applying it to Production.

3. In all cases, before rolling out the change to production, the ops team member must file an Issue in the DT project describing the change. This Issue must include a link to the runbook.

4. Once the request has been approved by the CTO, the CTO may roll out the change into production environments.

1. LifeWIRE uses automated tooling to ensure systems are up-to-date with the latest security patches.

2. On Windows systems, the baseline Group Policy setting configures Windows Update to implement the patching policy.

1. All development uses feature branches based on the main branch used for the current release. Any changes required for a new feature or defect fix are committed to that feature branch.

• These changes must be covered under 1) a unit test where possible, or 2) integration tests.
• Integration tests are required if unit tests cannot reliably exercise all facets of the change.

2. Developers are strongly encouraged to follow the commit message conventions suggested by Visual Studio Online.

• Commit messages should be wrapped to 72 characters.
• Commit messages should be written in the present tense. This convention matches up with commit messages generated by commands like merge and revert.

3. Once the feature and corresponding tests are complete, a pull request will be created using the Visual Studio Online web interface. The pull request should indicate which feature or defect is being addressed and should provide a high-level description of the changes made.

4. Code reviews are performed as part of the pull request procedure. Once a change is ready for review, the author(s) will notify other engineers using an appropriate mechanism.

• Other engineers will review the changes, using the guidelines above.
• Engineers should note all potential issues with the code; it is the responsibility of the author(s) to address those issues or explain why they are not applicable.

5. If the feature or defect interacts with ePHI, or controls access to data potentially containing ePHI, the code changes must be reviewed by two members of LifeWIRE’s software security team before the feature is marked as complete.

• The software security team members will provide a security analysis of features to ensure they satisfy LifeWIRE’s compliance and security commitments.
• This review must include a security analysis for potential vulnerabilities such as those listed in the OWASP Top 10 or the CWE top 25.
• This review must also verify that any actions performed by authenticated users will generate appropriate audit log entries.
• Software security team members are required to undergo annual training on identifying the most common software vulnerabilities and will receive ongoing training on LifeWIRE’s compliance and security requirements.

6. Once the review process finishes, each reviewer should leave a comment on the pull request saying “looks good to me” (often abbreviated as “LGTM”), at which point the original author(s) may merge their change into the release branch.

Software releases are treated as changes to existing systems and thus follow the procedure described in 9.4.