Trusted Computing Group's work for security devices to share the data they collect is drawing more members to the standards group.

Lumeta, which makes a network-discovery appliance called IPsonar, says it is joining TCG so it can participate in use of a new standard that facilitates such sharing.

TCG has launched an effort to promote a protocol it calls IF-MAP, which stands for interface for meta-data access point. The protocol is intended to be spoken between security devices on networks and a MAP that receives and posts the data.

The posted data can then be picked up by IF-MAP compliant devices that can make use of this data that they would otherwise have no access to. So a change-management platform might flag a configuration deficit on a device and a security management device reviewing that alert might recognize that shortcoming as a violation of security policy.

The result could be fixing a vulnerability before it can be exploited, whereas the vulnerability might not have been detected in the absence of presenting the deficit to a metadata store.

Correction of the vulnerability could also make use of the meta data store. Another device such as a firewall could change policies to protect the vulnerable device before the vulnerability is exploited, for example.

Lumeta is the first vendor to announce that it has joined TCG specifically to support IF-MAP, which was introduced in April.

So far TCG hasn’t announced anyone actually using IF-MAP in the field, but stay tuned for more on that.

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.