Configuration is a routine part of setting up and maintaining IT environments, serving as the fundamental building block that ensures systems run smoothly and align with organizational needs.

However, without proper configuration security assurance, mistakes can easily go undetected, creating gaps that leave endpoints vulnerable to attack. To prevent such exposure means not only applying settings correctly but also continuously validating them and their enforcement mechanisms against best practices and security standards.

In fact, some would say it is the most fundamental and the basic building blocks required to ensure your platform works correctly and according to your organization’s needs. You might also think that performing configurations is not so complicated and why it is relevant to security and preventing cyber attacks on the endpoints of my organization.

Before we answer this question, let’s get an understanding of your IT Platform.

The Growing Complexity of IT Configuration Management

If your organization is based on a Microsoft environment (like over 80% of all organizations worldwide), then you are familiar with Domain Controllers, Active Directory and Group Policy Objects (GPO). Microsoft first released its NT Server in 1993.

Today, the latest version is Windows Server 2019 (released in November 2018). The cloud based product called InTune is correctly in beta but soon to be formally launched.

Over the years, the product has evolved and grown in both features and complexity to satisfy the needs of organizations from small business to large global enterprises. Today, there are tens of thousands of configuration options available and this makes it impossible for any IT Professional to be knowledgeable in all of them.

How Gaps Leave Your Organization Vulnerable

Today, most IT Professionals will turn to Google when needing to perform a configuration and this is where the first set of problems begin.

Google and other search engines are a wonderful thing for the IT Professional. Let’s say for example, I have received a directive from the CISO in my organization that SMB version 1 needs to be disabled on all endpoints due to the well known vulnerability which hackers can exploit. I will look to achieve this using a Group Policy setting.

I make the configuration setting and report back to the CISO that the corrective action has been performed. However, how can I validate that this configuration has been correctly applied to all endpoints in my organization?

In this example, its is frequently found that an IT Admin will not configure the GPO correctly (thanks to google), and that a subset of the endpoints in the organization would still have SMBv1 enabled, remaining vulnerable to hackers.

Until this can be validated on all endpoints in the organization, both the CISO and IT Admin believe it has been applied correctly and would be surprised if a successful cyber attack occurs due to this weakness being exploited.

Bridging the Gap with Secure Configuration Assurance

As we have seen, it is nearly impossible to eliminate all misconfigurations without a comprehensive system in place. Yet, a misconfigured endpoint can open the door to significant vulnerabilities, leaving your organization exposed. This is where secure configuration assurance comes into play.

By continuously validating compliance with standards like ISO 27001 and NIST, an ECS solution not only mitigates the risk of misconfigurations but also alerts you when configurations need remediation, ensuring your security posture stays strong and up to date.

In today's threatscape, it's critical to eliminate any weak spots which leave you open to attack. With configuration security assurance, you can safely manage and optimize your endpoint posture, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities and strengthening your defenses.