Auditing Tools for Windows Systems

A comparison of existing security controls and settings with one or more baselines helps to validate the correctness of security controls. The process of comparing real computer configurations to known baselines, also called profiling, is important to ensure your configurations are correct and secure.

For each of the following scenarios, select the best tool to profile a Windows computer to determine if it satisfies your security requirements, and write at least 2 pages about these scenarios and the tools you selected.

You must select from the following options:

1. Security Configuration and Analysis (SCA)
2. Microsoft Security Baseline Analyzer (MBSA)–Graphical User Interface (GUI)
3. MBSA command-line interface
4. Shavlik NetChk Protect
5. Secunia Security Analyzers

Suspected malware scenarios:

1. You want to schedule a weekly analysis for the Windows servers in your data center. The command should run as a scheduled job and report any available patches for the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system, Internet information services (IIS) Web server, or structured query language (SQL) server that have not been installed. Which tool would be the best choice?
2. You like the way MBSA presents scan results but you need to scan for vulnerabilities in older Windows products, including Microsoft Office 2000. Which tool provides extended scanning and the ability to use MBSA to view scan reports?
3. Your organization wants to encourage all of its employees and contractors to use vulnerability scanners at home as well as at work. You want to select a single vendor that can provide scanner software products for home and enterprise computers. A single vendor product line can streamline coordinating and analyzing scan results from many different computers. Which set of tools would be the best choice?
4. You have developed several templates that consist of security settings for several types of computers, including desktop workstations, laptops, and various servers. You want to quickly compare a computer’s settings to its corresponding template to see if any configuration settings have changed. Which tool would be the best choice?