3.1. Introduction

3.1.1. What is SIMP?

The System Integrity Management Platform (SIMP) is an Open Source framework designed around the concept that individuals and organizations should not need to repeat the work of automating the basic components of their operating system infrastructure.

Expanding upon this philosophy, SIMP also aims to take care of routine policy compliance to include NIST 800-53, FIPS 140-2, the DISA STIG, and the SCAP Security Guide.

By using the Puppet automation stack, SIMP is working toward the concept of a self-healing infrastructure that, when used with a consistent configuration management process, will allow users to have confidence that their systems not only start in compliance but remain in compliance over time.

Finally, SIMP has a goal of remaining flexible enough to properly maintain your operational infrastructure. To this end, where possible, the SIMP components are written to allow all security-related capabilities to be easily adjusted to meet the needs of individual applications.

3.1.2. Conventions used in this documentation

The following typographic conventions are used in this documentation:

Purpose

Example

Code snippets

ensure => true

CLI commands

yum update -y

Files

/etc/simp/version.x.y

Programs

mcstransd

Packages (e.g., RPM, RubyGem)

simp-utils

Puppet Modules

simp/simplib

GitHub repos

simp/simp-doc

Jira issues

SIMP-8464

Literal text

keyword

Internal hyperlinks

Changelogs

Glossary terms

SIMP

External hyperlinks

SIMP website