Breezing Through STIG Audits With 94% Less Effort and 62% Lower Costs

There are a lot of challenges that go along with manual STIG compliance. It takes subject matter expertise, which is hard to come by. There is a lot of rework, especially when it comes to implementing customized policy. It requires a lot of time. And it is always there, staring you down, through quarterly update after quarterly update.

If you have a strong coding culture and plenty of hands on deck, manual STIGging is doable. But even then, the tedium can wear on you. And the stress of audits just adds to the mix. But one Federal Civilian Agency found a way to break that cycle—and cut 94% of their labor costs and 62% of their overall costs in the process.

Looking for improvements and finding a solution beyond compare.

The customer had been using WatchMaker to automate their STIG process on their Linux systems. It certainly helped ease some of the burden, but after using it for a while, the gloss wore off the solution. It required a lot of manual remediation and coding, especially when it came to customized policy. Consequently, hardening took too long to update when DISA released new STIGs each quarter. The customer was passing their audits, but inefficiently and compliance generally weighed in around 50% among their Linux systems.

When SteelCloud introduced ConfigOS MPO coverage for Ubuntu LX, the customer did a side-by-side comparison. The main features that appealed to them was ConfigOS MPO’s easy policy customization, its automated remediation, its strong reputation in the DoD and other agencies, and its unified approach with scanning, remediation, continuous compliance and reporting built in. This would help a lot in raising their compliance percentages.

As the customer observed, “When you’re doing the scans, you can set up different policies to do different things. So if I wanted to set up certain ones to hold back certain things, I can pick it, and run the STIGs that way. Start with one policy and not have to do them over and over again.”

Reducing effort of STIG audits by 94% and costs by 62% while improving compliance.

With ConfigOS MPO, the customer’s audit-readiness is greatly improved, simplifying compliance and increasing overall security. They have hands-free continuous monitoring and compliance. They also report an increase in morale and productivity among the team. Better yet, they have realized a number of measurable benefits, including:

• Reduced Effort. The customer now spends about an hour per endpoint during its lifecycle to gain and maintain compliance vs 16 hours per endpoint before. That’s a 94% reduction manhours and effort.
• Improved Compliance. The customer went from around a 50% compliance rate among their Linux systems to compliance rates of 90% and above.
• Lower Costs. Switching solutions to ConfigOS MPO helped the customer avoid $85K year over year, a 62% savings overall.

With ConfigOS MPO, the customer has a powerful unified automation solution that has been proven in some of the world’s most secure and contested environments. It simplifies compliance among a remote workforce and operates securely in any environment from air-gapped and classified to the cloud. Now their entire government enterprise is in talks to make ConfigOS available to other agencies under their purview.

If you think your STIG compliance solution is the best, fastest and most affordable you can get, let us prove you wrong. Download our free eBook or schedule a demo today and see how much better STIGging can get with ConfigOS MPO.