ESKM Server Requests Test

The HP Enterprise Secure Key Manager (ESKM) is a unified solution for encryption key management and security policy enforcement across the enterprise. The security server automates generation and retrieval of encryption keys for multiple client applications and devices based on security policies. This enables the key management transactions occur quickly and transparently to business application users. The security server encrypts or decrypts the data at rest or in motion based on the server requests received from the key server. The server requests can be any one of the following types:

Authentication
Certificate Export
Key Clone
Key Export
Key Generate
Key Import
Key Modify

The HP ESKM generates and manages the keys according to the above-mentioned server requests that are received from the key server. When the server has processed the server requests, the security server sends back the encrypted keys to the key server. Then, the key server delivers the encrypted keys to users in the most secure way. For uninterrupted delivery of the keys, the adminstrator should make sure that the server requests are processed successfully and sent back to the key server without any delay. When the delay occurs during processing of the server requests, the server requests are stored in a queue. If the server requests are kept in the queue for longer duration or failed due to network or manual errors, then, the appliance will experience processing bottleneck. This in turn will impact performance of the key server and also cause delay in delivery of the keys. Therefore, the administrator should closely monitor the server requests processing on the appliance and quickly initiate remedial measures to prevent the delay before the users complaint about slowness in key delivery. The ESKM Server Requests test aids the administrator in this regard!

For each type of server request, this test reports total number of requests processed by the security server and also reveals number of requests that were processed successfully and number of requests that failed. This way, this test alerts the administrator to processing bottleneck at the security server.

Target of the test : A HP Enterprise Security Key Manager

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the each type of server requests processed by the target HP Enterprise Security Key Manager that is to be monitored

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
SNMP Port	The port number through which the target router exposes its SNMP MIB; the default is 161.
SNMP Version	By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMP version list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list.
SNMP Community	The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the firewall. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the SNMP version chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear.
User Name	This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the snmpversion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against the username parameter.
Context	This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVERSION. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the username in this text box. By default, this parameter is set to none.
Auth Pass	Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned user name. This parameter once again appears only if the snmpversion selected is v3.
Confirm Password	Confirm the authpass by retyping it here.
Auth Type	This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options: MD5 - Message Digest Algorithm SHA - Secure Hash Algorithm SHA224 - Secure Hash Algorithm 224 bit SHA256 - Secure Hash Algorithm 256 bit SHA384 - Secure Hash Algorithm 384 bit SHA512 - Secure Hash Algorithm 512 bit
Encrypt Flag	This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the snmpversion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, this is set to no by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the yes option.
Encrypt Type	If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types: DES - Data Encryption Standard 3DES - Triple Data Encryption Standard AES - Advanced Encryption Standard AES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit AES192 - Advanced Encryption Standard 192 bit AES256 - Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit
Encrypt Password	Specify the encryption password here.
Confirm Password	Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here.
Timeout	Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds.
Data Over TCP	By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.
Engine ID	This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Total requests	Indicates the total number of server requests of this type that were processed on the security server.	Number
Successful requests	Indicates the number of server requests of this type that were processed successfully.	Number	A high value is desired for this measure.
Failed requests	Indicates the number of server requests of this type that failed.	Number	Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero.