Change and Configuration Management

Good change and configuration management (CCM) is at the very heart of any well-structured IT architecture. Everything starts with a solid, healthy and well constructed infrastructure that must be configured properly and governed by an effective Change Management process.

The problem is that the solutions designed to enable good CCM have typically been very expensive and horribly complicated....well not anymore!

With NNT Change Tracker you can:

Establish department, group or company-wide templates for the set up and configuration of all devices
Backup and restore the configuration of every IT device
Label configurations for fast restoration to the last known and compliant state
Track changes made to the IT infrastructure – who, when, where, what, and was the change authorized?
All changes recorded within the change repository with the option to retrospectively approve and reconcile changes after the event
Immediately be alerted if a change has altered an otherwise compliant state, such as for PCI DSS
Audit your entire infrastructure for configuration or security breaches
Out of the box or ‘Build your Own’ Compliance Reports
Create security, health and performance policies for all devices
Automate bulk configuration changes across your IT infrastructure
Integrate with Service Desk and CMDB for ‘closed loop’ Change Management – did we change what we said we would change?
Baseline the best possible working configuration for your infrastructure (If a problem occurs a change has taken place, identify what changed and you have identified the root cause of the problem!)

With NNT Change Tracker Enterprise for CCM you are able to establish and provision a 'baseline' for the best possible and most secure configuration and state for all IT devices. Once this is done, Change Tracker Enterprise will track any change to your approved baseline and unauthorized or poorly executed changes will be flagged immediately with the option of quickly remediating to a 'known, working & compliant state'.

Planned change process is provided with the ability to reconcile changes made with the detail of the RFC, providing the world’s first 'closed loop' change management solution.

Change & Configuration Management and IT Best Practice - Click Here

ITIL Best Practices identify Change Management as one of the key, central processes that should be understood and assimilated into an IT Service Delivery operation. Change Management as a process is intended to ensure that when changes are made, they are first verified as being completely necessary and adding some value to the organization, and if so, that changes are then well planned, documented and clearly communicated to ensure any potential negative impact from the change is understood and eliminated or minimized. The entire experience and knowledge of the enterprise is harnessed and greater efficiencies can be gained from ‘one visit’ fixes - i.e. a number of required changes can all be delivered during one planned maintenance window. A well maintained Configuration Management Database (CMDB) will often be used as a means of better understanding the ‘downstream’ effects of changes and or their impact on a number of critical business services.

Crucially for any organization subject to Corporate Governance-driven security standards, changes to any IT system can affect its security. Installing application updates may introduce new vulnerabilities and making any configuration change may also render systems less secure and more prone to a security breach.

Change Tracker™ tracks all changes to your infrastructure, exposing all unplanned changes and reporting clearly on the intended - and uniquely, the actual outcome - of any planned change.

All network device configurations are automatically and securely backed up, with the option to remediate any unauthorized configuration change. Server configurations are tracked against either pre-defined security policies or your own personalized policy, with any deviations highlighted.

And once firewalls, servers, workstations, switches and routers are all in a compliant state, you need to ensure they remain that way. The only way to do this is to automatically verify configuration settings on a regular basis. Why? Because unplanned, undocumented changes will always be made while somebody has the admin rights to do so – legal or otherwise! Change Tracker™ will alert you when any unplanned changes are detected as well as keeping an audit trail of planned changes, reconciled with the request for change details.

This provides a unique ‘Closed-Loop Change-Management Safety Net’ - when changes need to be made to a device it is vital to ensure that changes are approved and documented – we make this easy and straightforward, reconciling all changes made with the RFC or Change Approval record. An open API allows integration with most service/help desks or other change management systems to establish a link between the change approval process and the actual changes that are made.

NO WONDER SECURE COMPUTING MAGAZINE RECENTLY AWARDED NNT CHANGE TRACKER™ THEIR HIGHEST AWARD OF 5 STARS FOR ‘FEATURES, EASE OF USE, PERFORMANCE AND VALUE FOR THE MONEY’.

"Change Tracker integration with Castle Rock’s SNMPc allows for us to get all the benefits on monitoring our systems without the additional overhead of needing to always have another program up. This has been a very important feature in training tiered response staff and making sure that incidents are processed in a timely manner"
Brad Morgan Systems Analyst