Symantec ALTIRIS SECURITY EXPRESSIONS User manual
Altiris® SecurityExpressions™
Proactive Security Configuration Management
Data Sheet: Compliance and Security Management
Confidence in a connected world.
Page 1 of 4
Overview
One of the leading causes of security breaches and loss
of data is improperly configured systems. Achieving and
maintaining conformity across multiple systems
challenges even the most technically adept and
process-focused organizations. Even more complex is
the ongoing validation that ensures that carefully-tuned
security controls remain unchanged. Symantec solutions
support an organization’s security processes through
the implementation of sound security configuration
baselines, proactive evaluation, and comprehensive
reporting.
Benefits
• Establish baseline configurations from best practices
templates, including CIS, NIST, SANS, and others
• Evaluate IT controls against Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI DSS,
HIPAA, FISMA, ISO 27001, and their regulation
requirements
• Rapidly identify systems that deviate from established
baselines
• Quickly remediate issues within ITIL-compliant change
processes
• Assess security status through interactive reporting
• Monitor the entire enterprise with support for
Windows, Linux, and UNIX
Problem Discovery Through Automation
Effective security configuration solutions empower IT
organizations to implement a comprehensive security
practice. As a result, organizations can implement
documented audit and change processes that discover
and correct lapses in standards and procedures.
Discovery of problems is achieved with automated
assessments that provide consistent analysis without
impacting staff productivity, while integrated workflow
processes ensure closed loop verification that standards
are upheld. The ability to continually manage security
configurations from definition, evaluation, remediation
through monitoring is what distinguishes Symantec
solutions from other solutions.
Build Effective Configuration Baselines
The first step to proactive security configuration
management is to define effective baseline policies.
However, developing these baselines can be a
time-consuming, difficult task that requires extensive
expertise in configuration management. Altiris solutions
from Symantec simplify the process with industry best
practices templates that can be implemented directly or
customized to meet your needs. Altiris®
SecurityExpressions™ software also supports
homegrown configuration policies. Both
methodologies accelerate deployment while ensuring
rigorous best practices protection. The resulting policies
can be tailored and published to document
administrative controls.
Data Sheet: Compliance and Security Management
Altiris® SecurityExpressions™
Confidence in a connected world.
Page 2 of 4
Quickly Identify Non-compliant Systems
Symantec solutions allows IT and security personnel to
conduct real-time audits. Altiris technology from
Symantec can accurately and quickly compare the
system’s configurations against the company’s existing
policy. This process allows IT managers to conduct
comprehensive audits on a frequent basis, plan and
execute remediation, and re-evaluate compliance with
minimal effort. In this manner, any security issues can
be quickly identified and addressed. Companies can
validate compliance with automated security audits
rather than discover too late that vulnerabilities exist.
Tackle Issues with Closed-loop Remediation
Integration with Altiris® Helpdesk Solution™ software
and Remedy, including extensibility to other service desk
systems, enables organizations to plan and remediate
systems while tracking configuration changes against
ITIL-compliant processes. SecurityExpressions can
automatically open an incident based on the audit
results. IT administrators can then quickly remediate
noncompliant systems using SecurityExpressions’
built-in tools or integration with other Altiris
management solutions from Symantec such as patch
management or software delivery. Once the remediation
step is complete, a secondary audit validates the fix and
the incident can be closed. Closed-loop remediation
improves IT change control processes without disrupting
system availability.
Continually Monitor Security Status
Assessing system security postures requires the ability
to not only evaluate the system, but also the ability to
easily visualize the results and assess progress.
SecurityExpressions provides concise reporting that
summarizes the results of any audit, as well as detailed
reporting that provides all of the information necessary
to remediate any vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Access to reports, including trend and noncompliance
reports, allows organizations to plan remediation
activities and evaluate risk-based compliance.
Organizations can even weigh each rule to produce
relative risk analysis, apply asset classification to weight
importance, and review roll-up scores for an entire
audit.
SecurityExpressions includes a comprehensive reporting function
that allows you to compile dozens of reports such as trend, summary,
noncompliance, and detail reports.
Data Sheet: Compliance and Security Management
Altiris® SecurityExpressions™
Confidence in a connected world.
Page 3 of 4
Detect and Evaluate Mobile Systems
Mobile systems are infrequently connected to the local
network; as a result they are often missed during routine
audits. Because these systems also have infrequent
communication with management systems, they are
more at risk for failing to comply with configuration
standards. SecurityExpressions includes an optional
add-on, Audit-on-Connect, to ensure that mobile
systems can be audited as they connect to the network
rather than on a fixed schedule, so systems that are
missed in a scheduled audit can be picked up the next
time they connect.
Supports Agentless and/or Agent-based Options
SecurityExpressions offers both an agentless and an
agent-based option that can be mixed and matched as
required across all Windows, UNIX and Linux desktops,
notebooks, and servers. The included agent does not
require administrative credentials and is a perfect
solution for auditing servers. SecurityExpressions also
has an agentless approach to reach tens of thousands of
systems, effective for auditing local or remote desktops.
System Requirements
Console Requirements
• Memory—256 MB RAM (512 MB if using scheduling
service)
• Minimum disk space—500 MB
• Browser—Internet Explorer 5.0 or later
Optional Server Requirements
• Memory—512 MB RAM
• Minimum disk space—500 MB
• ODBC Database—SQL Server 2000 or 2005, SQL
Server Express
• Services—IIS 5.0 or later; Internet Explorer 5.0 or later
to access
Operating Systems Supported
• Console—Windows Server 2000, 2003 (32- and
64-bit), XP
• Optional Server—Windows Server 2000 or Windows
2003 (32- and 64-bit)
Audit and Compliance Targets
• Operating systems—
- Windows NT 4 (agentless only)/2000/2003 (32- and
64-bit)/2008 (scheduled to be supported summer
2008)/XP/Vista (32- and 64-bit)
- Solaris 8 (SPARC), 9 (SPARC), 10 (SPARC and x86)
- SUSE Linux 8, 9, 10
- Red Hat Linux 8, 9, AS3, Enterprise 4.3
- HP-UX 11, 11i
- AIX 5.1, 5.2, 5.3
System Reach
• Agents on any or all systems
• Agentless on any or all systems
• Distributed proxy for remote sites
Data Sheet: Compliance and Security Management
Altiris® SecurityExpressions™
Confidence in a connected world.
Page 4 of 4
More information
Visit our Web site
http://enterprise.symantec.com
To speak with a Product Specialist in the U.S.
Call toll-free 1 (800) 745 6054
To speak with a Product Specialist outside the U.S.
For specific country offices and contact numbers, please
visit our Web site.
About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security,
storage and systems management solutions to help
businesses and consumers secure and manage their
information. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif.,
Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries.
More information is available at www.symantec.com.
Symantec World Headquarters
20330 Stevens Creek Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014 USA
+1 (408) 517 8000
1 (800) 721 3934
www.symantec.com
Copyright © 2008 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec and the Symantec logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries.
Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 04/08 14064944
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