Automating Compliance Reporting & Remediation with Itential

A critical step in ensuring that your network is operating securely and reliably is to adopt a regimented process of running compliance checks across every network device and service, generating a compliance report, and remediating any device that is determined to be non-compliant.

Network Configuration Management Automating Compliance Reporting & Remediation

Is the Lack of a Compliance Reporting & Remediation Process Holding You Back?

With the number of network devices and network services constantly increasing, it becomes incredibly difficult for network teams to have a grasp of whether all their individual network elements, which comprise the whole infrastructure, are configured optimally and operating securely. Over the course of time, standards for the business will evolve which means that network devices must have their configurations updated to adhere to these new standards. This process ensures that the network maintains a state of compliance and builds trust and confidence, the foundation of network automation.

So ask yourself, are you still:

Relying on human intervention alone to check every network device for compliance?
Think about the number of network devices that are deployed in the network and consider how much time it would take for one person to manually check a single device’s configuration, compare it to an existing configuration standard, and make changes, if there were any differences. Once this process is completed for every network device, it needs to be constantly repeated to ensure everything remains in compliance. Using manual methods, this becomes an impossible task, even for a large team of network engineers.

Worried that parts of your network are at risk because they have drifted out of compliance?
Given the immense amount of time it takes to manually accomplish this process, there’s a very good chance that there are network devices that are operating outside of safe standards, posing an unnecessary risk to the business.

If yes to either of these, it’s undoubtedly time to automate.

The network is critical infrastructure for any enterprise and must always be secure, reliable, and perform optimally. The network teams that work hard to build and maintain the network deserve to have a modern solution to this serious problem, as it can never be solved with manual, human intervention alone and needs to be addressed with a modern network automation solution.

Why It’s Time to Modernize Your Compliance Reporting & Remediation Processes

Manual processes alone are not a real solution to ensuring that every device and service across the entire network is configured properly according to a Golden Configuration standard. Even with legacy NCCM or open-source tools, network teams still struggle with defining standards, running compliance checks, and generating reports for the entire network. When any device is found to be out of compliance, the process of remediation is still typically accomplished manually because these legacy tools don’t support configuration updates or did it so poorly that it couldn’t be trusted. The result is that large areas of the network have become risks to the business because there is no active compliance checking and reporting occurring. This problem compounds as more modern network infrastructure is deployed that no longer uses a CLI method of configuration, but instead uses APIs. Legacy solutions are CLI-centric and do not work with modern API-centric network solutions.

Itential provides an easy way for network teams to modernize their compliance checking, reporting, and remediation processes as Itential’s Configuration Manager was purpose-built to support both CLI and API network devices at scale and overcome the challenge of ensuring the network is always operating according to the latest compliance standards.

Legacy Tools

Itential Configuration Manager

Limited network support. Limited vendor support and lack of integration with API-based networks, which limits the ability to automate compliance and remediation across the entire network.

Support for the whole network. Built-in CLI support for multiple network vendors, a process to define syntax for new network devices, and integration of APIs for modern and cloud networking. Automated compliance reporting and remediation for every network device and service.

Static process. Compliance templates are limited to static entries, with a limited set of rules. Checking devices and remediation is not flexible and puts more burden on human intervention.

Dynamic, flexible, and reusable. Focused on ease of use and saving time with defining Golden Configurations using variables and templates, to scheduling checks of different devices at different times, and intelligent automated remediations.

Perpetual network risk. Lack of automation means there will always be areas of the network that are not compliant, and that means they are a risk to network security or network stability.

Network trust and confidence. Automating compliance reporting and remediation means that every network device and service can be checked for compliance and intelligently remediated if needed.

No visibility to network trends. Without a historic view of compliance trends, network teams lack visibility which can help identify and troubleshoot problems or security issues in the network.

Awareness of network hotspots. Identify network devices that drift out of compliance over time and identify anomalies before they become security breaches or a network outage.

How to Automate Configuration Reporting & Remediation with the Itential Automation Platform

Itential’s configuration management capabilities are built to support both CLI and API network devices and services, regardless of whether they are physical, virtual, or cloud-based, and deliver the ability to quickly create Golden Configuration standards for every one of these network elements so that network teams can generate compliance reports and automatically remediate devices. Itential is built to empower network teams to automate these manual processes, so they can maintain a fully compliant network and ensure that the network is running securely and reliably.

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