State Government, Victoria story
As a major agency serving Australia’s most densely populated state, a Victorian government agency (referred to as “the Agency”) maintains a large-scale, complex network that is critical to the operations of the organization and its constituents. The Agency’s network has more than 3000 devices across multiple locations. It undertook an evaluation of multiple enterprise solutions to meet its technical vulnerability assessment requirements as the first step in a longer-term initiative to create a decision support system.
Key Business Needs: The Agency was looking for a vulnerability scanning and reporting tool that met the agency’s high standards for scalability, ease of use, reporting, performance and safety.
Tenable Products Selected: After evaluating multiple solutions, the Agency chose Tenable SecurityCenter for organization-wide vulnerability scanning and management.
Top Benefits: SecurityCenter’s automated scanning and simplified reporting saves staff time while supporting the organization’s long-term objectives of decision support.
Business Needs
The Foundation for a Decision Support System
As part of its initiative to implement a decision support system (DSS), the Agency needed a suite of vulnerability investigative and reporting tools. It set out to find a solution that would serve as the first step in establishing the DSS.
Given the high cost of deployment usually associated with such tools, the Agency looked for user-friendly software tools that would fit within reasonable budget constraints. The Agency also looked for a modular solution that would let them develop a roadmap for expansion as its needs evolved.
Management and Integration Requirements
The Agency needed a vulnerability scanning solution that offered customizable workflows for managing vulnerabilities. The Agency’s staff wanted an easy-to-use central console, with the ability to automatically schedule scanning tasks and generate reports. They also needed to be able to integrate the solution with Microsoft Active Directory.
In addition to these specific requirements, the team evaluated solutions for scalability, stability, benchmarked performance, and safety within its operating environment.
The Tenable Solution
After evaluating alternatives, the Agency chose Tenable SecurityCenter.
SecurityCenter leverages the power of Nessus® vulnerability scanners, backed by the industry’s largest vulnerability database. SecurityCenter enhances scanning capabilities with centralized and automated scan management, extensive compliance reporting and auditing, and customizable dashboards, all within an easy-to-use interface.
With IT security specialists Content Security serving as advisors and integrators, the Agency rolled out SecurityCenter across its organizational network. The SecurityCenter solution fulfills all of the Agency’s expectations. SecurityCenter is now deployed across its network infrastructure, allowing staff to scan and monitor the network and actively find and investigate any vulnerabilities.
Results
Today, SecurityCenter provides the Agency with vulnerability management using an easy-to- use interface and robust, enterprise-class functionality.
Usability has been one of the biggest benefits. People find it very easy to create and run reports in SecurityCenter, and to assign users to different network segments.
Reporting is also a significant benefit. SecurityCenter offers intuitive and professionally formatted reporting with company branding. IT staff can generate and submit reports directly to executives, without spending time on formatting and contextualization.
With of the modular structure of the Tenable solution, the Agency has created a roadmap for expansion, linked to its plans for developing a DSS for the organization.
