Streamlining the Configuration Security Lifecycle

In today’s digital landscape, organizations face relentless cyber threats, with ransomware incidents posing a significant risk. Microsoft reports that 80% of ransomware is attributed to device misconfigurations, highlighting the urgency of robust device configuration management.

Device configuration management ensures IT devices are securely configured and maintained, reducing susceptibility to cyber-attacks. It involves systematic configuration, monitoring, and adherence to industry best practices.

This challenge is composed across PCs/laptops and Servers, with typical operating systems of Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

Stakeholders

Effective device configuration management synergises stakeholders across Infrastructure, IT and security domains:

Infrastructure

Implement and maintain hardware/software components, establish baseline configurations, and deploy updates to minimize disruptions.

IT

Manage IT resources, ensuring secure provisioning, configuration, and monitoring of devices.

Security

Define security policies, conduct risk assessments, and enforce security controls to mitigate risks.

They utilize configuration management tools for vulnerability monitoring and compliance enforcement.

Key Stages of the Device Configuration Security Lifecycle

Define Security Policy

Establish and enforce security policies using mechanisms like Active Directory (AD), Group Policy Objects (GPO) and Intune. Ensure adherence to gold standard builds and validate existing policies.

Baseline Configuration

Compare configurations against industry standards such as CIS and NIST. Continuously monitor compliance and highlight areas misaligned with the framework.

Continuous Monitoring

Detect device misconfigurations by operating systems and provide insights into severity and impact using tools like GYTPOL.

Risk Impact Assessment

Assess the impact of making a configuration change on operational impact.

Change Advisory Board Integration

Seamlessly integrate with ITSM platforms like ServiceNow for streamlined workflow management.

Remediation

Close the security gap effectively and concisely without an impact on operations, with confidence.

Reporting

Enable reporting on risk mitigation and resource alignment to determine the cost of ownership.

Regular Audits and Assessments

Provide continuous monitoring and curated reporting for ongoing security posture maturity.

Adapt and Improve

Ability to ensure all learnings and detections are eliminated and evolve into a maturing life cycle.

Streamlining the Configuration Security Lifecycle

GYTPOL, a robust device configuration management tool, plays a pivotal role in automating and streamlining the secure device configuration life cycle.

Validation and Monitoring

Define Security Policy

Typically, within IT domains – Security policies are established and enforced through mechanisms such as Active Directory (AD), Group Policy Objects (GPO), and Intune.

GYTPOL can validate the deployment of these policies,
furthermore, GYTPOL can scan gold builds for any misconfiguration and ensure exploitable misconfigurations are detected.

Baseline Configuration

Typically, within IT domains – GYTPOL compares configurations against industry standards such as CIS and NIST.

Unlike most point-in-time scanning solutions, GYTPOL continuously complies by highlighting areas that are not aligned with the framework in question.

Continuous Monitoring

Typically, within the Security Domain – GYTPOL offers continuous monitoring, detecting hundreds of misconfigurations across Windows, Linux, and macOS systems.

It provides insights into affected devices, the severity of issues, and the potential impact of the flagged misconfigurations mapped against the MITRE ATT&CK Framework, detailing tactics and real-life examples amongst threat actors targeting the protocol in question – e.g, Solarwinds abusing debugged privileges and network access, BLACK BASTA – formerly CONTI – are using the “Print Nightmare” exploits in the print spooler service for privilege escalation and remote code execution.

Remediation and Reporting

Risk Impact Assessment

Typically, in the Infrastructure Sec Ops domain – Utilizing a proactive “know-before-you-go” approach, GYTPOL assesses the dependency of devices on specific protocols, ensuring minimal impact. It includes a rollback feature to revert changes if necessary.

Providing insights into the severity of the misconfiguration, tactics, actors, and how they are exploiting the protocol in question.

Change Advisory Board Integration

Typically, IT Infrastructure security domain – GYTPOL seamlessly integrates with IT Service Management (ITSM) platforms like ServiceNow for streamlined workflow management.

Remediation

Typically, Infrastructure, Security EUC domain, Desktop, Server Team.

1. Automatic Zero-Impact Remediation: By determining the device depending on the protocol in question and reading the usage logs, GYTPOL determines potential impacts. For instance, in the case of the Print Nightmare vulnerability, if printing activity has been absent for a set period, hardening can proceed without an impact with one click!
2. Auto Re-Apply Remediation: Offers the option to automatically reapply authorized hardening configurations when new devices are added, or existing ones become misconfigured again.
3. Rollback of Remediations: Provides a quick method to revert to previous hardening configurations, should there be an impact.
4. Scheduled Remediation: Allows administrators to decide when to implement remediation actions within designated maintenance windows.
5. Grouped Devices and RBAC: The ability to manage device groups, determining who from each department can do what, via RBAC, and be able to manage devices by groupings for detection and remediation.
6. Reduce Meantime to Remediation: GYTPOL’s architecture ensures organizations can limit the window of opportunity for threat actors – reducing the meantime to remediation to less than 60 minutes, allowing one-click remediation for hundreds/thousands of devices at once.
7. Attack Path Curation: GYTPOL will provide a narrative as to which tactic and threat actors the action will help bolster mitigation against

Reporting

Typically, C-Level – GYTPOL enables reporting of the meantime to mitigate risks and the proportional effort expended in closing these gaps. GYTPOL quantifies cost savings achieved through automating the process, compared to manual efforts.

Regular Audit and Assessment

In contrast to traditional point-in-time pen tests and VA scanning, GYTPOL offers continuous monitoring and curated reporting, ensuring ongoing security
posture evaluation.

Adapt and Improve

GYTPOL offers the option for auto reapply of remediations to maintain authorized hardened configurations as devices evolve or encounter misconfigurations.

By incorporating GYTPOL into the device configuration management process, organizations can enhance their security posture, mitigate risks, and ensure compliance with industry standards.