Fortra's Managed Integrity Monitoring Security Services

File integrity monitoring is a critical security control that gives organizations a strong security posture by detecting and alerting on potential threats, allowing for rapid response and mitigation. Because file integrity monitoring is so fundamental to an organization’s security posture, it’s required by many major compliance standards such as North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP), the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

File integrity monitoring software works by tracking all changes occurring across operating systems, servers, databases, cloud accounts, endpoints, and more. Every cybersecurity breach begins with a single change, and when organizations get deep visibility into the integrity of their environments in real time, they can remediate suspicious changes before damage is done. File integrity monitoring tools can distinguish between authorized and unauthorized changes and report on changes that impact compliance.

Security configuration management is a process designed to minimize misconfigurations that could cause systems to drift from compliance or expose opportunities for cybercriminals. This process of detecting and remediating misconfigurations combines elements of integrity monitoring, configuration validation, vulnerability assessment, and system remediation. It can be applied on-premises and in cloud environments, serving as a critical component of successful cybersecurity.

Security configuration management software helps organizations fix misconfigurations quickly. This includes configurations on network devices, databases, directory servers, workstations, operating systems, applications, and cloud storage accounts. By keeping configurations aligned with compliance regulations and security best practices, organizations can shrink their attack surface while simplifying compliance.

New security vulnerabilities arise in software regularly. The MITRE corporation maintains a publicly shared catalog of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that leave systems open to new vulnerabilities as they arise. Vulnerability management tools scan systems for known vulnerabilities, empowering organizations to proactively detect and neutralize emerging risks. VM software also assigns risk scores to the vulnerabilities it detects to help security teams tackle their most severe vulnerabilities first.

The first step to detecting vulnerabilities is to get a comprehensive view of your organization’s attack surface. VM solutions perform asset discovery and inventory to provide a clear and accurate picture of authorized — and unauthorized — devices, software, and assets on the network so vulnerability scans don’t miss anything. Vulnerability management security products can also supply detailed reporting with prioritization, remediation instructions, and metrics to track vulnerability trends over time.