Tripwire already helps enterprise IT administrators monitor file integrity and check policy compliance. Now the firm said the latest version of its security software has significantly enhanced its compliance solution with Remediation Manager, a new capability that automatically repairs configuration errors.
While Tripwire Enterprise 8.0’s Compliance Policy Manager component already monitors file integrity and compliance with policies, the new release goes a step further in repairing the errors.
The company said Remediation Manager can repair up to 98 percent of failed configuration tests on Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux and Solaris systems. The software corrects deviations like misconfigured or insecure servers while providing traceable approvals and workflows.
“Remediation Manager provides workflow tracking, approvals, and constant visibility into the state of misaligned or drifted configuration items,” Tripwire said in a statement.
The new feature makes its debut as corporate IT, despite being constrained by budgets that remain tight, continues to be tasked with maintaining compliance with government or industry data security requirements — a pain point that’s particularly acute for heavily regulated industries, such as finance, health and energy. In many cases, enterprises simply fail to adequately ensure that critical infrastructure meets regulations like PCI DSS or security standards like FISMA, the Federal Information Security Management Act.
To help admins better keep their systems secure and compliant with regulations, the Tripwire Enterprise 8.0 release is designed to identify and correct any deviations it finds based on dozens of policies, including PCI, SOX, NERC and FISMA. By being able to automatically take action, Remediation Manager can significantly reduce the time it would otherwise take to repair non-compliant items — in most cases from hours to just minutes, according to Tripwire.
“With Remediation Manager, we’re now offering an automated way to centrally remediate configuration problems and mitigate security risks before customers can be exploited or fail an audit — without requiring the cost and time of manual IT administration,” Tripwire’s COO Dan Schoenbaum said in a statement. “Customers who have tested the solution calculated that the product would pay for itself in less than a year.”
Tripwire Enterprise 8.0’s Remediation Manager also gives companies the ability to align their infrastructure with industry standards and vendor guidelines as well as security benchmarks and best practices.
From a reporting point of view, the Enterprise 8.0 release lets organizations access real-time status reports that monitor the progress of remediation work orders. The advantage for operations and compliance teams is that the reports let them keep all stakeholders up-to-date and prepared for audits.
Additional features in Tripwire Enterprise 8.0 include Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) validation, a component in U.S. government IT standardization efforts for agencies and contractors. It also adds new support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4.
Tripwire said Remediation Manager is available now on a per-server add-on basis for existing Tripwire Enterprise customers, or is bundled with the initial purchase of Tripwire Enterprise 8.0.
David Needle is the West Coast bureau chief at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.
