Make sure Your Security Controls are Installed and Running

We have many different tools for the security of our enterprise desktops, such as antivirus, firewalls, etc. These products watch over our desktops and keep us safe, but “Who watches the watchmen?”. That is, what makes sure that these security tools are working and correct security issues on your desktops when they do occur?

ControlUp released Secure DX to increase the security posture of your desktop device. In this blog, I will look at a specific feature in Secure DX: Security Controls.

Before I describe what Security Controls do, let me tell you what Secure DX in general and Security Controls specifically do not do. Secure DX does not do network, operational, data, and infrastructure security. Nor is it an anti-virus program. Many other programs perform these functions. Secure DX delivers real-time scanning detection and remediation of issues on desktop devices. It finds vulnerabilities and outdated applications and presents an easy-to-understand prioritization for the remediation of issues based on the exposure and risk to a business. A key part of this is Security Controls, which detect the state of the security tools you have deployed.

Assessing Your Security Posture

Companies spend thousands, even millions of dollars, on programs to deploy and protect their endpoint devices, and rightly so, as endpoints are the most likely to be attacked and compromised. Once this front line of digital defense has been compromised, the rest of the corporation is at greater risk of being exploited and compromised. This is where Secure DX’s Security Control feature comes into play. It watches over security products to ensure that they are deployed and running.

This feature is so important that at the top of the Devices dashboard are two widgets that track their status. The top left widget shows the Device Coverage by Category. This shows how many devices are covered and not covered, separated by category.

To get a more granular view of the products, the next widget can show all or specific categories of specific security programs and if they are installed and active. The drop-down menu will limit the view of what is displayed in the widget.

How Protected Is a Device

The sortable and filterable Device Grid shows what security programs the devices are using. The status of these programs feeds into the Score and Issues columns of the grid.

Diving Deeper into a Device

We can get more information on a devices security controls by clicking on it in the grid.

The devices metadata, shown in the far-left pane, shows what security controls are being monitored on that device.

To get  information about the security controls, click the Security Controls tab.

This will show more information about the security controls, including if they are installed and running.

To get more information about a specific product you can click it. This will bring up the product’s dashboard, which shows the number of devices it protects and how many are not protected by it.

Obviously, not all companies use all the security programs security controls support, and there are cases when separate lines of business and departments use different programs. Templates are used to specify which programs should protect which devices. When creating a template, the programs that will be checked are under Compliance > Security Controls.

Once the template is completed and a scan has taken place, you will see its results.

Conclusion

We have many different tools for the security of our enterprise desktops: tools like antivirus, firewalls, etc., but to quote the Roman poet Juvenal, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” which translates to “Who will guard the guards themselves?” which has morphed into modernity as “Who watches the watchmen?”.

In a sense, that is what the Security Control feature in Secure DX does: it watches over the watchmen in IT – security applications.

Click here for more information on Secure DX or any of our other award-winning products or to schedule a personal demo.

Jeff Johnson

Jeff is a product marketing manager for ControlUp. He is responsible for evangelizing the Digital Employee Experience on physical endpoints such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. Jeff has spent his career specializing in enterprise strategies for client computing, application delivery, virtualization, and systems management. Jeff was one of the key architects of the Consumerization of IT Strategy for Microsoft, which has redefined how enterprises allow unmanaged devices to access corporate intellectual property.