Security Compliance Manager Beta Now Available for Review
The Solution Accelerators Team has announced the beta release of the Security Compliance Manager version 1.0.
The Security Compliance Manager version 1.0 provides centralized security baseline management features, a baseline portfolio, customization capabilities, and the ability to automate the creation of GPOs and System Center Configuration Manager DCM packs to accelerate an organization’s ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.
Quick summary of the tool posted on the Microsoft Solution Accelerators Security & Compliance blog:
Centralized Management and Data Repository: The centralized management console of the Security Compliance Manager provides you with a unified, end-to-end user experience to plan, customize, report, and export security baselines. The tool gives you full access to the complete database of recommended security settings for Windows client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications.
Security Baseline Customization: Customizing, merging, and reviewing your baselines just got easier. Now you can use the new customization capabilities of the Security Compliance Manager to duplicate any of the recommended baselines from Microsoft-for Windows client and server operating systems, and Microsoft applications-and quickly modify security settings to meet the standards of your organization's environment.
Security Baseline Comparison and Export: Security Compliance Manager enables you to quickly adopt the latest Microsoft product releases. Side-by-side baseline comparison features allow you to identify any changes to setting configurations and merge baselines within a product family with ease. Export and deploy baselines in your format of choice, including Desired Configuration Management (DCM) packs, Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), XLS, or Group Policy objects (GPOs).
Security Baseline Compliance Monitoring and Verification: Keep current with the latest releases from Microsoft; automate your security baseline compliance process, and take advantage of baseline version control and automatic update features. The planning, customization, and export features of Security Compliance Manager quickly enable you to leverage monitoring and verification technologies, automate policy deployment, and produce compliance reports.
Also check out the TechNet Security Solution Accelerators website.
Update 22 February - see a summary video (4 minutes):