HPE Workload Aware Security for Linux (WASL): Achieve security compliance in minutes

[ComputeExperts]

Learn how HPE Workload Aware Security for Linux (WASL) helps reduce security compliance deployment time from days to minutes for HPE servers, including SAP HANA solutions.

It's hardly a secret that data breaches are on the rise—with a staggering nearly 5 million data records breached each and every day.¹

Sadly, your organization may not even know that you’ve been breached. This lack of awareness carries a high cost. In fact, in 2017, cyberattacks cost businesses worldwide $600 billion in losses.²

That’s why recent security attacks are motivating enterprises to rethink security effectiveness not only to curb financial losses but also to win customer trust. Rapid growth of digital transformation is putting pressure on the enterprises to shift from a reactive towards a more proactive approach on security to reduce risks.³

Even though security and compliance are among the top priorities for enterprises, many organizations are finding it difficult to achieve and stay in compliance with the latest security and regulatory requirements.

How are you securing your HPE servers to meet today’s regulations and requirements?

Most organizations still follow a traditional approach in system security with professionals manually hardening hundreds of systems with the help of guidelines and scripts. The industry-standard repository Center for Internet Security (CIS) publishes best practices and some scripts to determine Linux security compliance. SAP has also published a 277-page guide on how to secure a SAP HANA implementation. The downside of these manual processes is that they are prone to human error and consume significant time to evaluate, remediate, deploy and maintain security compliance.

In Europe, the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC has recently been replaced with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), effective as of May 25, 2018. From this date, organizations are expected to be compliant, and remain compliant going forward. Ever-changing industry rules and regulations put additional stress on security professionals to maintain system security policies.

WASL helps achieve security compliance for Linux and SAP HANA environments.

If you are deploying SAP HANA appliances or TDI solutions, you need to adhere to the SAP HANA security guidelines. If you are deploying Linux mission-critical applications, you need to meet CIS security compliance. HPE tests found that out-of-box Linux distributions can be only about 50% compliant to industry standards. To directly address these challenges, HPE recently introduced a single-click security product—HPE Workload Aware Security for Linux (WASL)—that can help you reduce security compliance deployment time from days to minutes.

HPE WASL is an intuitive push-button security compliance checking tool featuring optional single-click remediation for HPE systems and HPE SAP HANA appliances. WASL hardens both the OS instance and the SAP HANA application achieving over 90% security compliance. The remaining 10% requires user input like a password or a file location for logs.

WASL’s consolidated dashboard—Security Management Station (SMS)—provides a graphical interface to add and remove nodes, check compliance, remediate non-compliance issues and, if needed, rollback to a previous version of security compliance. WASL also adds customized policies and generates audit reports. Because HPE understands the need for strict, role-based security responsibilities, WASL provides the ability to define and enable security roles such as user administrator, policy officer, security operator, security administrator, security auditor and administrator.

Here you see the HPE WASL security managment system dashboard tracking system compliance before remediation and system compliance after remediation.

System Compliance Before Remediation

System Compliance After RemediationRemember, security compliance is no longer optional.

With digital transformation, data volumes are rising exponentially, so the need for an easy-to-run compliance program is strong. HPE WASL can secure new deployments for less than 1% of total system cost. WASL can significantly reduce administrative overhead costs because it’s simple and quick. 

If you are looking for simplified security compliance of SAP HANA implementations in Linux environments (RHEL & SUSE) on HPE servers, HPE WASL is the answer.

Please send an email to WASL@hpe.com for a 30-day WASL trial software. For more details visit HPE Workload Aware Security for Linux

1  https://breachlevelindex.com/

2 Cybercrime 'pandemic' may have cost the world $600 billion last year

3  IDC Research press release

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Meet Server Experts blogger Nithin Purushothaman, Product Manager, Mission Critical Solutions, HPE.

Nithin is focused on building a product which makes security professionals smile and organizations save millions. He is the Product Manager for the security compliance software, Workload Aware Security for Linux (WASL), and Technology Partner lead for HPE Mission Critical Servers. He has 10+ years’ experience in the field of virtualization, telco network engineering, customer support, product and partner management. Nithin earned an Electronics and Telecommunication engineering degree and holds an MBA from the University of Leeds.