COSduty-SSA employs a central server component for each
of its three major functions. In the case of procedure and
duty management, the procedure repository, access control,
scheduling, workflow, automation and managed system information
are all controlled centrally.
In the case of Privileged User Management, the central
server channels all interactive traffic between the administrators'
desktops and the managed systems, importantly acting as
each administrator's proxy by opening a privileged user
session on the managed systems before connecting the administrator
and active session together.
The COSduty-SSA server also actively monitors privileged
users' sessions in detail and passes the logging information
to the audit log server for safe storage. The audit log
server is recommended to be a separate system with strong
security.
In the case of the Password Vault, again a secure, central
repository is required to store administrator passwords,
distribute them to the managed systems, run the password
generation processes and respond to the users who are responsible
for authorizing their release to the engineers who need
to use them.
Managed systems are equipped with agents which respond
to the central server modules and act locally.
A summary of the characteristics of the COSduty-SSA central
server follows:
The software runs on all major variants of UNIX and
Linux
There are several configurable communications methods
including industry standards such as SSH and OSM's own encrypted
method
Contains the OSM Toolset command library to support
the development of new procedures
Includes failover capability to support failover to
another central server for improved availability
Provides the scheduling functionality for scheduled
duties
Contains pre-configured duties for routine security
checks for common variants of UNIX and Linux
Contains pre-configured duties for requesting privileged
user sessions
Manages all controlled access
The following are the notable characteristics of COSduty-SSA
agents
The agent runs on all major variants of UNIX, Linux
and Microsoft Windows operating systems
Supports the remote end of whichever communications
methods have been configured for use on the Server
Lightweight, remotely installable from the COSduty-SSA
Server and requires no host-specific licence key
Audit trails and logs
Audit trails and logs generated by COSduty-SSA are immediately
transmitted to an Audit Log Server, most often a low cost
appliance with no other function.
The main characteristics
of the COSduty-SSA Audit Log Server are:
The software runs on all major variants of UNIX and
Linux
Safely holds activity logs away from privileged users
who are being audited
Keeps activity logs in a relational database format
for easy search, query and reporting and for scanning so
as to alert management to suspicious command sequences.
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