OpenSCAP is an open source security compliance solution that implements the NIST Certified SCAP 1.2 toolkit. The project provides the oscap command line tool, which enables users to load, scan, validate, edit, and export SCAP documents. The toolkit supports multiple SCAP components including XCCDF, OVAL, OCIL, CPE, and data streams, making it a comprehensive solution for security compliance assessment and management.
The primary language of the repository is XSLT, reflecting its focus on document processing and transformation within the SCAP ecosystem. The project is classified across multiple security and compliance domains including configuration management, benchmarking, vulnerability assessment, policy automation, and auditing. Its topic tags explicitly cover scap, compliance, cpe, data-stream, oval, scanning, xccdf, and openscap, indicating the breadth of SCAP-related functionality it addresses.
OpenSCAP supports several key use cases in security compliance workflows. For SCAP content validation, the tool can validate all components within a data stream including XCCDF, OVAL, OCIL, and CPE elements. For scanning operations, users can evaluate OVAL definitions from standalone files or from OVAL components within data streams, evaluate specific profiles in XCCDF files, and evaluate specific XCCDF benchmarks that are part of data stream collections. The tool also supports document generation capabilities, allowing users to generate reports both with and without XCCDF rules and to generate reports from scanning results.
The project explicitly welcomes contributions and provides comprehensive documentation including a user manual, developer manual, and contribution guide. Community engagement is facilitated through an IRC channel at libera.chat #openscap and a mailing list. It is worth noting that official Microsoft Windows support was discontinued as of February 1, 2022, reflecting a shift in platform support priorities. The project is maintained at www.open-scap.org and represents a significant open source effort in the security compliance and SCAP tooling space.
