How does your system score on security?
Track the security of your system in real-time and get a clear assessment of where you stand with the Security Score.
Our previous blog posts covered the basics on the new dashboard feature in Security Center 5.8 and did a deep dive into the latest Genetec Mobile app. Now it’s time to talk about the overall security of your system and how you can ensure that it is measuring up.
How secure is your security system?
One of the keys to maintaining overall system health is keeping your infrastructure secure. An improperly protected device or component can leave you vulnerable.
A big advancement in Security Center 5.8 is the centralized monitoring of your system’s health. A more complete view helps you to anticipate problems and develop solutions proactively. This makes you more effective with your system maintenance and alerts you to prevent small issues from turning into major concerns. The results include lower costs and less downtime.
There are steps you can take to mitigate risks, and we’ve developed a widget to help you keep track as you do.
The new Security Score widget automatically tracks the security of your system in real-time and provides you with a clear assessment of where you stand. So, how does it work?
What is the new Security Score widget?
The Security Score widget is a dynamic hardening tool that checks the security of your system in real-time. It lays out guidelines and then monitors whether the different elements of your system comply. Based on your compliance with the criteria, the widget gives you a score so that you know how secure your whole system is at all times.
The widget monitors the security of your platform, cameras, video management system (VMS), and access control system (ACS) and will grow as new components are added to the hardening tool. It also includes both required and recommended criteria, but your score is based only on whether or not you comply with the requirements.
Centralized compliance monitoring
In the past, you may have been responsible for checking your compliance on disparate system components. Accessing the information required hunting down the various criteria and then checking each element manually, making the process highly labor-intensive. It also meant that you couldn’t get a real-time view of your system’s overall health.
The new Security Score widget centralizes everything on one page so that you can be proactive about the security health of your entire system. With the widget, you’ll move away from potentially faulty and incomplete self-assessments to the system telling you what’s happening all the time.
Helping you comply with best practices
The guide itself is based on best practices for everything from installing your software/hardware to maintaining your system throughout its lifecycle. These include changing default passwords at installation and encrypting data in transit and at rest.
Because the list of criteria is native to Security Center 5.8, it can be updated at any time as we add new best practices for new components. This means that, even if you hit “next-next-next” when you first installed your cameras, your Security Score will increase as soon as you go back and change the default passwords.
One of the interesting features about the widget is that it provides you with a brief description of each criteria as well as the opportunity to read the full explanation in PDF form. The hope is that the widget will help increase the overall awareness of the criteria, which will lead to an increase in the number of properly protected systems around the world. Check out the example below.
Easy access to the Genetec Update System
In addition to following best practices, ensuring that your system is up to date is also key for maintaining its security. The Genetec Update Service (GUS) automatically keeps Security Center current with the latest fixes and improvements. And now, it’s even easier.
Where the GUS used to have its own dedicated webpage that required effort before you could connect and configure, we have now integrated it into the Configuration Tool in the Security Center dashboard.
This is yet another way that Security Center 5.8 is centralizing health monitoring and improving the way both you and your system work.
