Auditing systems
An audit is an independent evaluation of a computer system to determine whether it is in
compliance with corporate and industry security standards. Audit results show recommended
improvements to reduce risks.
McAfee Policy Auditor evaluates systems against independent standards developed by
government and private industry. It can also evaluate systems against standards that you create
yourself. McAfee Policy Auditor uses audits to determine the compliance status of systems and
returns results indicating any areas where the system is out of compliance.
Scoring audits
When you audit a system with McAfee Policy Auditor, it returns a score indicating how well the
system complied with the audit. McAfee Policy Auditor supports the four scoring models described
in the eXtensible Configuration Checklist Description Format (XCCDF) 1.1.4 specifications.
What's new
McAfee Policy Auditor has a number of new features to enhance user experience and expand
capabilities.
These are the major new features for this software release:
•
McAfee
®
Policy Auditor Content Creator — Allows users to create simple benchmarks
and fill in the rule values manually or import them from an existing system.
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McAfee Benchmark Editor enhancements — McAfee added these new capabilities to the
software:
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Ability to drag and drop groups
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Ability to drag and drop rules between groups
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Ability to delete groups
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Enhanced display of expired results — Provides detailed information about expired results
to help users determine what steps to take.
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Server performance improvements — The server database has been rewritten to speed
processing and to eliminate duplicate storage. McAfee added four new dashboards to help
users understand the status of audits.
•
Database health tools — McAfee added daily and weekly server tasks to speed database
access by reducing fragmentation and rebuilding fragmented indexes.
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Improved audit failure status — McAfee Policy Auditor agent plug-in audit exceptions are
logged in the ePolicy Orchestrator software server event log. The exceptions can be seen
through a new McAfee Policy Auditor server query and dashboard.
•
Agent debug support — The McAfee Policy Auditor agent plug-in includes a tool to help
you solve problems on managed systems. The tool has these features:
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Interface — Graphical for Windows systems, console for all supported operating systems.
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Audits — Displays and allows you to run available audits.
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Benchmarks — Displays and allows you to run available benchmarks.
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Checks — Displays and allows you to run available checks.
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Debug information — Collect and save information, including the log file and database,
to a ZIP file.
Getting started with McAfee Policy Auditor
Auditing systems
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McAfee Policy Auditor 6.0 software Product Guide for ePolicy Orchestrator 4.6
