We’re going to talk about state versus change. For the purposes of our discussion, you need to know that Tripwire Enterprise offers something called TE Commander.

Many enterprise applications lack a native command line interface. This can be a challenge if you want to automate and integrate basic operations, which is a necessary function in most enterprise IT environments. Tripwire® Enterprise (TE) Commander is a cross-platform CLI (Command Line Interface) for Tripwire Enterprise that allows unlimited integration and workflow possibilities. It offers a consistent, flexible, and reliable way to retrieve rich information from Tripwire Enterprise.

So, let’s get back to the state versus change. This came up because we were talking about the different types of reports you can generate in TE and TE Commander. When you run a report in TE, for instance, you can run a report for a week but not necessarily see any results. Then you could run the same report using TE commander, and it would let you see what the configuration, elements, or whatever you’re researching for what an asset is like on that day.

The reason is this whole concept of state versus change. Let’s define those terms now.

Working Definitions of State and Change

We’ll begin by defining state. State relates to running a report through TE Commander.  When it scans a system, whether that’s scanning configuration items by running your command or whether it’s scanning actual files on the server, it’s kind of like taking a Polaroid. You’re taking a picture of the server, and you’re taking a snapshot of it at this date currently. You’re saying “Here’s what I have” for files, dates, times, the content, whatever the hash of the file is, and who has permissions on it. All that good stuff. So, we can capture all the (Read more...)