Explore SIFF Use Cases

Unified Configuration Monitoring

Large organizations naturally have separate domain of expertise for various technology functions within their environment. The challenge however is to avoid limiting information only to the individual silos. As modern business services increasingly become more and more distributed, with inter-dependencies crossing many technologies (containers, VMs, hybrid-cloud, software-defined networks, vlans, etc), it is essential to have visibility and quickly determine how simple configuration changes can drastically impact other services and cause major critical outages.

Avoid “finger-pointing” and reduce “all-hands” conference bridges needed to triage critical incidents
Provide visibility across all domain silos, technologies “layers” to understand the inter-dependencies for business services
Quickly identify possible configuration changes that may impact a business service, even though the responsibility belongs to a different group
Unify configuration collection, monitoring and compliance across all groups

Configuration Search & Reporting

A common task of looking up configuration details can be more time consuming than it seems. You need to connect to the device or system, use the appropriate access credentials, navigate to the right files and/or use the correct commands to display the configuration details. Now add multiple devices and systems, different vendors and technologies – it’s easy to become bogged down in the legwork rather than accomplishing the task at hand. SIFF makes this simple – users can simply search for any configuration details across their entire environment as though they’re searching Google.

Quickly enables searching for configuration across many devices and systems
Compare configuration changes between systems and version history
Visibility to configuration information without granting access to devices
Generate reports using actual configuration details and search criterias

Centralized Configuration Repository & Versioning

The promise of a centralized configuration repository or CMDBs have been around forever. Current approaches however lack the actual configuration details necessary for it become useful. Most CMDBs implementations are often adopted as CI references for ITIL processes while providing rudimentary asset information (e.g. CPU, Memory, etc). SIFF provides a configuration repository that contain actual configurations from ALL devices and systems, that can be easily searched, reported and acted upon

Single, searchable, time-based and versioned repository with actual configuration details
Consistent access to configuration across all groups and silos, technologies and domains
Single source of configuration for operational troubleshooting, change management and governance

Troubleshooting & Repair

85% of IT incidents are caused by configuration errors. Visibility to configuration changes is essential to accelerate problem identification and repair. SIFF provides the ability to quickly search for relevant configuration changes and view the difference and history associated with those changes.

Quickly identify configuration changes that caused the incident
Visibility to authorized and unauthorized configuration changes
Visual change differences and change history
Unify configuration monitoring across all silos - networks, servers, apps, cloud, storage, security, etc

Change Activity Monitoring

Managing change is the key to driving business agility. The configuration throughout your environment, across all devices and systems, are the code or DNA to your organization. Most organizations today are completely blind to all the changes that occur, whether planned/authorized, unplanned/ad-hoc, or worse a security Indicators of Compromise (IOC). SIFF provides the ability to monitor changes across all your devices and systems to help:

Accelerate Incident Troubleshooting and Repair
Improve Change Management by Reducing Outages from Configuration Errors
Governance, Auditing and Compliance Monitoring
Security Auditing and Forensics

Change Management Peer Revew

Without visibility to change activity throughout the environment, it is challenging to distinguish between approved configuration changes, ad-hoc changes and unauthorized changes. SIFF can help provide the necessary visibility to config changes that occur in your environment.

Improve the Change Mgmt process by making it easy to review work that was carried out for a Change Request
Search for all configuration changes that occurred for a Change Request
Visual diffs between the new config and the previous configs for easy post-execution review to identify errors, omissions and possible service impacts
Reduce outages from configuration errors
Distinguish between planned / authorized changes and ad-hoc / unauthorized changes
Identify potential security Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

Security Audit & Compliance Reporting

For large organizations with governance teams, monitoring configuration policy compliance can be an exhaustive task. Most do not have any means to monitor or ensure compliance to these policies. For example don’t deploy application services without updating the default passwords, don’t add users to these servers, make sure the cloud storage is not open to the public, etc. SIFF provides the ability to define and automate configuration compliance monitoring to enable the governance team to proactively ensure the safety of the organization

Proactive compliance rules to avoid configuration errors such as default passwords in deployed applications and containers
Verify correct security rules are applied for cloud services
Detect possible security IOC such as open ports, outbound connections, new users, etc

Security Forensics

Once an intrusion has occurred, how do you quickly determine what has been compromised? What has been changed? SIFF provides the essential historical logging and versioning of all configuration information needed by the security team to determine the appropriate Course of Action (CoA).

Historical audit logging of all configuration information
View the configuration history and versioning
View the configuration across the entire environment at a specific point-in-time

Asset Inventory Reporting

Hardware and software asset inventory reporting are routine tasks that are performed on a regular basis. SIFF simplify these common tasks while also supporting advanced searching and reporting that may be needed for complex license audits

Easily generate asset and inventory reports
Advance search for license audit and compliance