A solution platform can boast all day long about its amazing capabilities and revolutionary functionality, but what about real-life results?
In the spirit of showing instead of telling, we wanted to share one of our recent wins where ASCERA deployment was able to make a noticeable, actionable, and tangible difference in an organization.
Setting the Scene: ASCERA Implementation in Real Life
A research organization with facilities for the Department of Energy and Department of Defense had a mature security compliance program and was ready to implement ASCERA into their tech stack. Overall, they were in a great state. Despite their compliance health, this organization discovered multiple assets without the Splunk forwarder during ASCERA deployment.
ASCERA Now in Action
So, how did this happen? A team of ASCERA engineers entered this organization’s environment ready to deploy the solution, including its custom-built compliance logic for NIST 800-171 controls. With automation turned on, connectors integrated, and data being ingested, ASCERA was able to: compare data to CMMC controls, this organization’s unique security policies and ODPs, and actual technical configurations for a “met” or “not-met” status.
The automation flagged a handful of assets in control 3.3.1 that were generating an un-met status. These assets were thought to be generating logs to be ingested into the SIEM but weren’t. Sure enough, after investigation with the client, it was found that the log forwarder was broken.
Compliance vs. Security Impacts of This Issue
After this discovery, ASCERA notified the organization of the “compliance drift” they were completely unaware of. This potentially saved them from unexpected audit findings prior to a C3PAO assessment, avoiding POAMS, wasted time and money, and derailment from their anticipated compliance timeline.
If an organization is unaware that several assets are not forwarding logs to the SIEM, it creates blind spots in monitoring and incident detection. From a compliance perspective, this could result in audit failures or noncompliance with logging and monitoring requirements. From a security standpoint, it increases the risk of undetected breaches, delayed response, and potential data loss, as malicious activity on those assets could go unnoticed.
Moving Forward with ASCERA’s Continuous Controls Monitoring
With the custom-built compliance logic in full swing, this organization will be able to continuously monitor controls in near real-time moving forward. This means instant notification the moment a control’s status changes, and an opportunity for proactive remediation.
To see if your organization could benefit from ASCERA’s automated status reporting and controls monitoring, get in touch with our team today!