Common Event Expression

Common Event Expression (CEE) standardizes the way computer events are described, logged, and exchanged. It is an effort hosted by Mitre, as so many other computer security standards like CVE, or OVAL. The CEE effort is subdivided into four sub-efforts. Each of them will publish their own set of requirements to guarantee seamless future interoperability of devices and applications:

• Event Syntax
• Event Taxonomy
• Event Transport
• Event Logging Recommendations

The order in which I listed these efforts is most likely the order in which CEE is going to address the different standards and how they are going to be standardized. There is a real need to standardize all of these items if we want companies (mainly vendors) to focus on building meaningful and interesting analysis capabilities, instead of spending all their time on normalizing log files, building connectors, and trying to interpret the meaning of log messages.

I am posting this in lieu of the official launch of the CEE Web site!

By Raffael Marty