1.5 Understanding Compliance Evaluation Tools

The security check and policy template reports help you determine the risk areas in your enterprise, so you can prioritize the security risks that you find. You can use the reported scores to determine whether your systems are trending toward or away from the security policies and baselines set by your organization. Secure Configuration Manager provides tools to help you evaluate the report results. You can use these tools to browse the data for the asset out of compliance to see exactly how the asset failed and how to remediate the issue.

Tool	Description
Web console	This browser-based tool provides assessment reports and dynamic reports that enable executives and managers to: View the overall status of your IT assets Visualize compliance and risk status your IT assets in tables or charts and graphs Perform a granular assessment of specific groups and computers Identify which IT assets are out of compliance with the enterprise’s security standard Determine whether the exposed system vulnerability poses a high, medium, or low risk Generate reports that combine results of multiple policy templates and endpoint types to observe trends in security compliance or compare the status of endpoints For more information, see Using Dynamic Reports to Evaluate Endpoints and Viewing Assessment Results, as well as the Help in the Web console.
Dashboard	This Web-based overview of your environment’s compliance enables executives and managers to: View the overall compliance of your IT assets Perform a granular assessment of specific groups and computers View the overall posture and trends of security compliance at a single glance For more information, see Using the Secure Configuration Manager Dashboard for Evaluation.
Asset Compliance View	In the Windows console, provides an overview of your environment’s compliance that enables console users to: View the overall compliance of their IT assets Perform a granular assessment of specific groups and computers Identify which IT assets are out of compliance with the enterprise’s security standard Determine whether the exposed system vulnerability poses a high, medium, or low risk For more information, see Using the Asset Compliance View for Evaluation.

Tool

Description

Web console

This browser-based tool provides assessment reports and dynamic reports that enable executives and managers to:

View the overall status of your IT assets
Visualize compliance and risk status your IT assets in tables or charts and graphs
Perform a granular assessment of specific groups and computers
Identify which IT assets are out of compliance with the enterprise’s security standard
Determine whether the exposed system vulnerability poses a high, medium, or low risk
Generate reports that combine results of multiple policy templates and endpoint types to observe trends in security compliance or compare the status of endpoints

For more information, see Using Dynamic Reports to Evaluate Endpoints and Viewing Assessment Results, as well as the Help in the Web console.

Dashboard

This Web-based overview of your environment’s compliance enables executives and managers to:

View the overall compliance of your IT assets
Perform a granular assessment of specific groups and computers
View the overall posture and trends of security compliance at a single glance

For more information, see Using the Secure Configuration Manager Dashboard for Evaluation.

Asset Compliance View

In the Windows console, provides an overview of your environment’s compliance that enables console users to:

View the overall compliance of their IT assets
Perform a granular assessment of specific groups and computers
Identify which IT assets are out of compliance with the enterprise’s security standard
Determine whether the exposed system vulnerability poses a high, medium, or low risk

For more information, see Using the Asset Compliance View for Evaluation.

Secure Configuration Manager can notify you automatically when an asset falls out of compliance. Receiving notifications can help you expedite the remediation process. Also, every organization has complex workflows and change management processes that require adherence. Sending out-of-compliance alerts to a change management ticketing system uses your company-defined workflow to quickly address assets that fall out of compliance. For more information about automatic notifications, see Automating Out-of-Compliance Notifications and Section V, Integrating with a SIEM Solution.