The IESG has approved the following document: - 'I2NSF Problem Statement and Use cases' (draft-ietf-i2nsf-problem-and-use-cases-16.txt) as Informational RFC This document is the product of the Interface to Network Security Functions Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Kathleen Moriarty and Eric Rescorla. A URL of this Internet Draft is: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-i2nsf-problem-and-use-cases/ Technical Summary The demand for hosted (or cloud-based) security services is growing. To meet the demand, more and more service providers are providing hosted security solutions to deliver cost-effective managed security services to enterprise customers. The Network Security Functions (NSFs) are provided and consumed in a large variety of environments. Users of NSFs may consume network security services hosted by one or more providers, which may be their own enterprise, service providers, or a combination of both. This indicates a potential benefit in a common interface and architecture to access NSFs. This document describes the problem statement for Interface to Network Security Functions (I2NSF) as well as some companion use cases. Working Group Summary This is the first document coming from the I2NSF WG. It is the result of combining 4 separate documents. It had more review in earlier stages, but I agree with the shepherd that there is WG consensus on this draft. Document Quality This problem statement is not, of itself, implementable. The WG has participation from a number of implementers/vendors of NSFs who say they want to work on solutions with a view to providing standardized interfaces. The operators who are participating have not committed to deploy such an interface, but are watching to see how it ends up because they recognize the potential benefit. Personnel Adrian Farrel (adrian@olddog.co.uk) is the Document Shepherd. Kathleen Moriarty (kathleen.moriarty.ietf@gmail.com) is the Responsible Area Director.
