Always Fresh wants to ensure its computers comply with a standard security baseline and are regularly scanned for vulnerabilities. You choose to use the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit to assess the basic security for all of your Windows computers and use OpenVAS to perform vulnerability scans.
Tasks
Develop a procedure guide to ensure that a computer adheres to a standard security baseline and has no known vulnerabilities.
For each application, fill in details for the following general steps:
1. Acquire and install the application.
2. Scan computers.
3. Review scan results.
4. Identify issues you need to address.
5. Document the steps to address each issue.
The organization opts to attain complete compliance with the standard security baseline for all its computers. Thus, the security risk evaluation and risk audit should be considered in order for the company to develop a suitable procedure guide. The security risk evaluation is a procedure that is typically initiated to identify, analyze, and assess different security threats to determine the most appropriate strategies that can be utilized in mitigating the identified risk to an acceptable level. On the other hand, the security audit refers to the cross-examination that is performed to evaluate the level of compliance with the firm’s standard security baseline (Fashoto et al., 2018). The two procedures are meant to facilitate the security of the firm’s computer system by evaluating the abilities of existing protection attributes. In this scenario, Always Fresh intends to rely on Microsoft’s Security Compliance Toolkit for the base security and OpenVAS to execute the required vulnerability scans. Therefore, the paper offers a comprehensive process guide that could be applied to guarantee that the firm’s computers comply with the created standard security baseline and has no known vulnerabilities.
To use Microsoft’s security compliance toolkit, the initial step is to download the software from Microsoft Appstore. The downloaded version should be compatible with the operating system that the company has installed on its computers. After downloading the applicable toolkit, the next step entails expanding the toolkit to access the resources contained within the package. Expanding typically implies opening the downloaded folder to evaluate the executable files entailed within it. After which, the computer administrators or the users should analyze, assess, edit, and document the level of compliance with the standard security baseline on Microsoft’s recommendations, which would be documented within the same files in the downloaded folder. The Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit shows an organized report showing the different threats identified within the computer systems (Baráth, 2017). Besides, the computer administrators will then utilize the recommended fixes based on the generated report and displayed on the GUI. Overall, the toolkit has the computer administrators’ option to configure frequent security checks and system updates.
The OpenVAS vulnerability scanners are more intricate than other scanners and need more tasks to run the scan on the computers effectively. The computer administrators could opt to either use a virtual machine or utilize the source code method. However, in this scenario, the firm should implement the application of the virtual machine method since it is not extremely intricate compared to the source code approach; hence anyone can fully comprehend how to run the vulnerability scans easily. For this technique, a virtual machine player would be required. The company should consider the application of the Hyper-V model since it is essentially easy to utilize and compatible with a broader array of computer programs. Further, the virtual machine must be properly configured with at least 2050 MB RAM and a minimum of 9 GB ROM (Chen et al., 2018). The following step entails downloading the OpenVAS ISO file from a credible source like OpenVAS.org or Greenbone.net, followed by running the software in the virtual machine by following the instructions, which pop up on the GUI. The computer administrators should create SSL certificates and grant the administrative protocols to OpenVAS. Lastly, the administrator can initiate a scan within the database through the application of OpenVAS.
In conclusion, the paper offers an inclusive user guide that outlines the particular process that the computer administrators at Always Fresh firm can follow in executing the security risk assessment and vulnerability tests. Cyber-security risks are rapidly increasing in recent years, thus requiring organizations to upgrade their security features. Therefore, using Microsoft’s Security Compliance Toolkit and OpenVAS, the organization can evaluate how effectively the firm’s computers comply with the created standard security baseline.
References
Baráth, J. (2017, October). Optimizing Windows 10 logging to detect network security threats. In 2017 Communication and Information Technologies (KIT) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Chen, Y., Wang, Q., Sun, M., Chen, P., Qiao, Z., & Chen, Z. (2018, August). Automatic security baseline verification method based on SCAP and cloud scanning. In International Conference on Computer Engineering and Networks (pp. 944-954). Springer, Cham.
Fashoto, S. G., Ogunleye, G. O., & Adabara, I. (2018). EVALUATION OF NETWORK AND SYSTEMS SECURITY USING PENETRATION TESTING IN A SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT. Computer Science & Telecommunications, 54(2).
