Secunia for ISU IT Staff: Secunia CSI Reporting and Updating at Iowa State University Jeff Balvanz ISU Information Technology Services Secunia Corporate Software Inspector is a system that collects information about the third-party software installed on computers running Microsoft Windows, compares it to a database of known software vulnerabilities and generates reports. The information collected can then be used to update those computers either manually or using WSUS or SCCM. The CSI console can be used to download updates and place them into the corporate WSUS server, where they can be automatically downloaded and installed to the vulnerable computers as part of the regular Windows Update process. CSI is really designed for a more centralized IT system than exists at Iowa State. The number of administrators that can access the console is limited. Software updates added to the system are automatically approved for installation on all computers. Reports for groups of machines can be generated on a schedule and mailed to an administrator, but the machines in the group must be selected by checking boxes in a list of all the machines in the system and the group cannot be edited, only deleted and re-entered. Needless to say, we often felt like we were driving a square peg into a round hole. After some development time, we believe we have a system that will allow departmental IT staff to make use of CSI. You can: Install updates automatically on on-campus machines, whether the machine is connected to the IASTATE domain or not; Collect information about vulnerable third-party software on your computers, whether they are on the IASTATE domain or not. Information about the software installed on your computers is gathered by the CSI Agent, a 668 KB application that can be either installed as a service, run as a scheduled job or run manually. It can either return the information to the Secunia server, where it can be compiled into a report on a group of machines, or it can create individual report files for each machine that can be collected or emailed automatically. The ITS Secunia administrators use this information to create update packages for vulnerable software. are placed on the ISU WSUS server, sus.iastate.edu. A machine can be configured to use that server as the Windows Update server; if the machine is placed in one of the Secunia-related client-side
Secunia for ISU IT Staff: Secunia CSI Reporting and Updating at Iowa State University Jeff Balvanz ISU Information Technology Services Secunia Corporate Software Inspector is a system that collects information about the third-party software installed on computers running Microsoft Windows, compares it to a database of known software vulnerabilities and generates reports. The information collected can then be used to update those computers either manually or using WSUS or SCCM. The CSI console can be used to download updates and place them into the corporate WSUS server, where they can be automatically downloaded and installed to the vulnerable computers as part of the regular Windows Update process. CSI is really designed for a more centralized IT system than exists at Iowa State. The number of administrators that can access the console is limited. Software updates added to the system are automatically approved for installation on all computers. Reports for groups of machines can be generated on a schedule and mailed to an administrator, but the machines in the group must be selected by checking boxes in a list of all the machines in the system and the group cannot be edited, only deleted and re-entered. Needless to say, we often felt like we were driving a square peg into a round hole. After some development time, we believe we have a system that will allow departmental IT staff to make use of CSI. You can: Install updates automatically on on-campus machines, whether the machine is connected to the IASTATE domain or not; Collect information about vulnerable third-party software on your computers, whether they are on the IASTATE domain or not. Information about the software installed on your computers is gathered by the CSI Agent, a 668 KB application that can be either installed as a service, run as a scheduled job or run manually. It can either return the information to the Secunia server, where it can be compiled into a report on a group of machines, or it can create individual report files for each machine that can be collected or emailed automatically. The ITS Secunia administrators use this information to create update packages for vulnerable software. are placed on the ISU WSUS server, sus.iastate.edu. A machine can be configured to use that server as the Windows Update server; if the machine is placed in one of the Secunia-related client-side