Secure Configuration

WHAT IS SECURE CONFIGURATION?

Secure configuration refers to the process of establishing and maintaining secure settings for systems and software to ensure their protection against known vulnerabilities. Configuration management plays a key role in this by defining the necessary requirements for secure configurations. This includes justifying the business need for specific software and systems and determining the baseline configurations for IT assets. By implementing approved security baselines across all standard platforms, organizations can ensure that necessary system hardening measures are in place.

To monitor compliance with these baseline configurations, organizations use scanning solutions that assess servers to ensure all required security settings are configured correctly. These solutions also identify any discrepancies or settings that need to be remediated. Once these configurations are flagged, the responsibility falls to the respective Business Units to address and correct the issues, ensuring their server configurations align with the organization's configuration management standards.

The importance of secure configuration management lies in several factors:

1. Reducing Vulnerability Exposure: By ensuring that IT assets are configured in compliance with established security standards, the risk of system compromise due to known vulnerabilities is minimized.
2. Maintaining Appropriate Security: Regular reviews of system configurations help ensure that appropriate security settings are in place and remain so over time.
3. Streamlining Vulnerability Management: Applying consistent configurations across the organization simplifies the management of vulnerabilities and weaknesses, making it easier to maintain overall system security.

OBJECTIVE

In practice, the goal of configuration management is to ensure that all required security settings are deployed on devices, particularly servers, and that ongoing validation processes are in place to confirm that these settings remain active and effective.

DATA SOURCES

• Insight VM
• ServiceNow CMDB