Audit
Ongoing security management is not a "set it and forget it" process. In large organizations, changes inevitably cause security configurations to "drift" over time. Adding software patches, fixes, and updates often causes modifications to revert to their original settings. To ensure that your security policies are enforced, you must audit your systems continuously.
A good security configuration management (SCM) tool allows you to audit and enforce your standards across your enterprise with relatively little effort.
ECM offers the following analysis and reporting features:
- Identify critical trends and conditions using pre-defined template and reports
- Track performance against desired objectives
- Automatically publish reports to communicate the results delivered by IT
- Provide both pre-defined and customizable usage reports to pinpoint problems, assist in root cause analysis and produce historical trending information
ECM and Continuous Auditing
Auditing requirements are changing. No longer is it "good enough" to perform semi-annual or annual audits on a handful of systems. Regulatory mandates and IT best practices are forcing a new paradigm: the need to ensure business continuity on a continuous basis. This means that IT needs to understand exactly how existing configurations compare to the desired state at all times. In essence, IT needs a Configuration Intelligence™ tool focused on technology that posesses the breadth needed to pass today's tough audits.
ECM provides this level of visibility. With ECM, you have a Continuous State of Audit of all settings from all machines. No need to commit precious IT resources and interrupt daily workloads getting ready for an audit. All the information you need is right at your fingertips.
ECM’s dashboards and report provide an enterprise level visibility into the configuration of your systems. Clicking an area of interest drills down to the supporting detail necessary to build a remediation plan. Performing system and security compliance remediation actions within ECM is simple. Whether it’s rollback of planned or unplanned changes, deploying a security patch, closing vulnerability by enforcing configuration values, or even removing a software application, ECM easily accomplishes the task with a single click.
ECM and Comprehensive Reporting
ECM helps you visualize and understand important trends across the enterprise. Interactive charting for on-the-fly analysis, consolidated event and performance data reporting, and a comprehensive set of performance data reports help you measure and manage the effectiveness of your IT assets.