Automate STIG Compliance Effectively and Efficiently
Every 39 seconds, a hacker attacks a system. In fact, it’s so bad that, in 2024, 87% of organizations said they were hit by an AI-driven cyberattack. Whether AI- or human-driven, the average cost of a successful data breach to your organization will be $9.6M, in addition to the damage it creates to your brand.
In a cybersecurity landscape filled with dangers and vulnerabilities, securing your IT systems isn’t just a best practice—it’s a necessity. One of the most rigorous and recognized security standards is the Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) developed by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). Aligning with STIG compliance standards, whether mandated or voluntarily, ensures that IT systems meet strict configuration requirements to minimize vulnerabilities and reduce risk.
In organizations in the DoD federal supply chain, cybersecurity standards like STIGs may be required to bid on jobs. It sounds simple enough—just follow this formula and you’re golden. But trying to implement STIGs manually is no small feat. It’s time-consuming, resource-intensive, and prone to human error, especially as environments scale and evolve. Fortunately, STIGs are one of the few proven cybersecurity standards that can be fully automated, offering a more efficient and reliable path to compliance.
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Why Automate STIGs?
The main reason to automate STIGs is to simplify the process. Manually applying 10,000+ STIG controls across your networks can take months of mind-numbing work that you will likely need to hire new experts to implement and maintain. With quarterly updates, the job gets bigger faster than you can complete it. Automating STIGs can reduce that effort by 90% with the staff you already have on hand.
STIG automation offers multiple advantages that can significantly enhance an organization's security posture and reduce risk:
- Minimize Effort: Automation simplifies cybersecurity, allowing your existing teams to not only implement top-tier protocols, but to have time to address other high-value tasks.
- Maintain Continuous Compliance: Instead of point-in-time assessments, automation enables continuous monitoring and enforcement, ensuring systems remain compliant as conditions change.
- Eliminate Human Error: Automating remediation policy ensures configurations are consistently applied across all systems.
- Deploy Faster. Once implemented, new devices and software can be available immediately, instead of going through weeks and months of manual remediation.
- Reduce Costs: Those who have automated STIGs report 70% lower costs than implementing them manually.
Better yet, if your compliance is subject to audit, STIG automation records every action along the way and reports on it to align with your audit criteria.
Available Automation Tools and Technologies
A variety of tools and technologies are available to automate some or all of the STIG process. Some of the most commonly used solutions include configuration management tools like Ansible, Chef, and Puppet, as well as SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) scanning tools.
While some of those solutions only automate parts of the STIG process or parts of your system, SteelCloud’s ConfigOS automates scanning, remediation and reporting across all systems—everything you need in one solution. Of the solutions listed here, it’s the most proven and the one the DoD uses to keep even their most sensitive systems in STIG compliance. Implementing Automated STIG Compliance
When automating STIGs, there are a few considerations and challenges to address and plan for beforehand to ensure a successful program:
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Assess Your Current Environment: Begin with a baseline assessment to understand the current state of your infrastructure. Identify which systems are in scope and what gaps exist in your current compliance processes. Keep in mind that older systems may not support modern automation tools, requiring workarounds or partial manual oversight.
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Choose the Right Tools: Select automation tools that align with your operational goals and can scale with your IT environment. Consider factors like ease of use, scope of impact, vendor training and support, and compatibility with existing operating systems.
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Address Staff Training and Change Management: Introducing automation may require upskilling existing staff and managing resistance to new workflows. A good automation solution will be easy enough to use that lower-level IT professionals can be easily trained in an afternoon. In fact, a really good solution will turn that person into a STIG ninja over time.
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Keep Up with STIG Updates: STIGs are updated regularly. Automation workflows must be designed to accommodate the update cadence and adapt quickly to changes to remain effective and compliant. When you consider the need to re-STIG your system not just for every STIG update, but also each time you update your system, automation is really the only way to to maintain a meticulous and secute system.
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Establish Continuous Monitoring and Reporting: Implement ongoing compliance checks and establish automated reporting to track progress, identify non-compliance, eliminate drift and demonstrate adherence to security standards over time. Automation can make continuous compliance nearly set-it-and-forget it.
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It’s Time to Take Your First Step
Whether mandated or not, STIG compliance will leave you with one of the world’s most stringent security standards—the same standards that protect our nation’s most sensitive systems and secrets.
We’ve seen many organizations give up manual implementations because the process is just so frustrating. Automating that process is a smart investment for organizations looking to enhance security, improve efficiency, and reduce the burden of manual processes. By embracing automation, companies can stay ahead of compliance requirements and better protect their critical IT systems, as well as their clients’ and those in their supply chain.
If your organization hasn’t started automating STIGs yet, now is the time to take the first step. SteelCloud can walk you through the process so you can see how easy STIG automation can be. Request a free, no obligation demo and start down the road to steelclad security.
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