DEVOPSdigest

Puppet by Perforce has deepened its commitment to U.S. federal government agencies with the latest release of Compliance Enforcement Modules (CEM).

The new update directly supports U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs). With Compliance Enforcement Modules, federal IT teams can automate continuous DISA STIGs compliance without the delays, risk, and costs associated with traditional, manual approaches. Compliance Enforcement Modules work natively with Puppet Enterprise and Puppet Comply to help users find and fix compliance issues across their enterprise. Federal IT teams receive real-time visibility into the status of their overall compliance posture and can quickly find and fix DISA STIGs compliance issues while continually enforcing desired state compliance.

DISA STIGs are configuration-level cybersecurity best practices and principles created by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). They are designed to safeguard and secure DoD IT networks and systems. To date, DISA has released over 700 STIGs, with more coming each quarter as cyber threats and common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) continue to mount.

Maintaining continuous compliance with relevant STIGs is a requirement for many government agencies and their contractors and is monitored by regular government audits for compliance. For many organizations, this is a painful and challenging process. The current manual approach to managing STIGs compliance produces inconsistent implementations across the enterprise, creating security exposures and driving up maintenance costs. This approach leads to delayed deployment of new technologies and security updates, leaving systems vulnerable and shelving innovation for months or even years.

The latest update to Compliance Enforcement Modules allows U.S. federal agencies to scan and remediate compliance issues easily in accordance with DISA STIGs, without the time-intensive costs, risks, or errors. It will enable organizations and institutions to safely deploy new technologies and security updates in minutes and days vs. months and years.

“Federal IT teams need modern tools to help maintain a proactive security and compliance posture across complex, diverse infrastructure,” said Chris Ganacoplos, Head of Public Sector Sales at Puppet by Perforce. “Infrastructure automation is a cornerstone to allow agencies to do more with less. This new release of Compliance Enforcement Modules eliminates the manual work of STIGs compliance management, saving time when adding new systems and more rapidly deploying hardened systems without increasing compliance risk. It frees up government teams to focus on accelerating the time to value for key new systems.”

As STIGs are updated or changed, the Compliance Enforcement Modules will be amended to ensure that agency IT staff can easily maintain continuous compliance across their entire enterprise.

Federal agencies can access Puppet Enterprise and the updated Compliance Enforcement Modules through Carahsoft GSA Schedule and authorized reseller partners. The first phase of STIGs support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 is available now. STIGs support for additional operating systems will be available starting in 2023.