StorageGuard overview

StorageGuard™ addresses the challenges of securing the vulnerable enterprise data storage and backup platforms. It automatically collects the up-to-date configurations of the enterprise’s data storage systems and checks for security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities including violation of vendor security best practices, organizational security baseline configuration requirements, ransomware protection guidelines, non-compliance with information security standards and more. It informs the relevant IT teams of violations and how to repair them in order to close the security gaps that put critical data systems at risk.

Key benefits of StorageGuard

• Meets vendor and community-driven security configuration best practices.
• Validation of Configuration Compliance with information security standards (ISO, CIS Controls, PCI DSS, NIST, NERC CIP and more).
• Automatically validates security baseline configurations.
• Automatically detects security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
• Tracks and reports on security configuration changes.
• Provides remediation guidelines for detected misconfigurations and facilitates automatic healing.
• Provides the platform for easily implementing custom security configuration checks for storage, backup, and host systems.
• Supports all leading enterprise data storage systems including SAN, NAS, HCI, Storage Network, Storage Management, Storage Virtualization, Data Protection Systems and more.
• An enterprise-grade solution – A secure and scalable solution that can be easily customized and/or integrated with other management systems.

New in Version 9.2.3

New features and highlights

This StorageGuard release introduces new features and major enhancements in the following areas:

End-of-Support alerts for Storage / Backup platforms

StorageGuard can now detect when a scanned Storage or a Backup system is using a version or a model that is nearing the end of support or already not supported by the vendor.

New Platform Support

The new release enables StorageGuard to collect the security configuration and automatically detect security configuration best practice violations or vulnerabilities for the following new platforms:

• Azure Cloud Storage

New built-in baseline policies

This release introduces a serie of new StorageGuard-recommended baseline policies. The serie offers different levels of security and implementation difficulty, starting with “Milestone 1: Getting Started”, through Milestones 2-4 (Enhanced > Advanced > Robust) and ending with “Milestone 5: Fortified”.

Enhanced security 

This release includes an upgrade to several components and resolves third-party vulnerabilities. Refer to Support Announcements for additional information.

Risk Knowledgebase update

The StorageGuard risk knowledgebase has been updated with additional industry security best practices, vendor recommendations and vulnerabilities. 

Additional Changes and Enhancements

The following section highlights additional notable changes or enhancements:

Fixed issues

The following issues are resolved:

Important Notes

Oracle database Locale requirement

The Oracle instance used as the backend database for the Continuity Software Platform must be configured with the English Locale. This requirement is complementary to other requirements identified in the Deployment guide and/or other documents.

Web Browser Support

StorageGuard supports Google Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. Microsoft IE is not supported.

Recommended display size and resolution

StorageGuard’s web user interface is best displayed and operated with these specs:

• Full HD resolution (1080p)
• Screens 21” or larger
• Aspect ratio of 16:9.

Using smaller screens, coarser resolution, or both might cause incomplete display of some information. Use the browser’s zoom-out function to display all content. 

Scan of Storage and Replication Management servers

It is recommended to scan all production / DR storage management servers as hosts. This is required even for management servers are already configured for scanning as storage proxies. A storage proxy scan operates at the API/CLI level whereas scanning the storage management servers as a host enables collection of additional configuration files and settings.

Scan of Windows hosts through WMI

Scanning of Windows hosts updated with KB3139940 might fail with an “Access Is Denied” message. To overcome this failure, please make sure that the user configured to authenticate to this server is a member of the Local Administrator group on the StorageGuard server. As of version 7.2.1, StorageGuard also provides an alternative method of scanning Windows servers using WMI which requires PowerShell version 5.1 or higher.

User account for technical support only

The csadmin user provides access to support tools that can cause damage if not used properly; This user is intended to be used by Continuity Software support engineers only. Enable and login with the csadmin user only when directed to do so by support personnel. This user is locked by default.

Database Views

The Database Views feature is currently only available when using Oracle DBMS. Support Database Views when using Postgres will be added in the future.

Limitations

Assigning a profile to an Active Directory group

• When assigning a profile to an AD Universal Group, the StorageGuard master server must have access to the Global Catalog of the AD Forest.
• When assigning a profile to an AD Local Domain Group, StorageGuard will not be able to assign the Profile to AD Users from a different Domain – even though such configuration is valid within AD.  In other words – an AD user can log in to StorageGuard (with all the correct profiles assigned) only if each AD Local Domain Group it belongs to is part of the same AD Domain the AD user belongs to.

Special characters are converted during object import to StorageGuard
When importing names and properties of objects from CSV/CMDB/API, special characters such as “&”,‘no-break- space’ and certain UTF8 chars are converted to alphanumeric chars.

In specific cases scan error messages are not sufficiently informative

The Scan Troubleshooting screen occasionally presents scan error messages that include the error code but no additional details.

Workaround: Run the erroneous command or script manually to see the full scan error message.  If further assistance required, contact Technical Support.

SSH key supports only keys with less than 4000 characters [P-6645]

Elevated rights required for certain read-only Commvault API calls

Few of the optional read-only API calls executed by StorageGuard on Commvault require elevated rights - SNMP & Audit Trail API. It's recommended to grant these rights to enable StorageGuard to perform a comprehensive risk analysis however it is not mandatory. Whether these rights are granted or not, StorageGuard will only run read-only APIs and commands.

Elevated rights required for certain read-only Dell EMC Data Domain commands

Few of the read-only commands executed by StorageGuard on Data Domain require the limited-admin role. It's recommended to grant these rights to enable StorageGuard to perform a comprehensive risk analysis however it is not mandatory. Whether these rights are granted or not, StorageGuard will only run read-only APIs and commands. Alternatively, configure the scan user with the read-only user role.

Elevated rights required for certain read-only Dell EMC Unity API calls

Few of the read-only API calls executed by StorageGuard on Unisphere for Unity require the securityadministor role. It's recommended to grant these rights to enable StorageGuard to perform a comprehensive risk analysis however it is not mandatory. Whether these rights are granted or not, StorageGuard will only run read-only APIs and commands. Alternatively, configure the scan user with the read-only operator role.

Elevated rights required for certain read-only Hitachi Ops Center API calls

Few of the read-only API calls executed by StorageGuard on Hitachi Ops Center require the Security Administrator role. It's recommended to grant these rights to enable StorageGuard to perform a comprehensive risk analysis however it is not mandatory. Whether these rights are granted or not, StorageGuard will only run read-only APIs and commands. Alternatively, configure the scan user with the read-only operator role.

Elevated rights required for scanning Windows hosts

It’s recommended to scan a Storage Management system both at the application level and the OS level. OS-level scan is optional but recommended for a comprehensive security configuration analysis. The OS-level scan is performed by connecting through either WinRM or WMI and then running read-only commands and queries. These commands and queries, even though read-only, require elevated rights.

NetBackup version support

StorageGuard supports scanning NetBackup systems from release 8.1 and above. NetBackup 7.x and 8.0.x are not supported.

CVE detection limitation

StorageGuard may report a CVE vulnerability that was either worked around or mitigated through remedial steps other than applying software updates.

CVE detection knowledgebase

The CVE knowledgebase is limited to advisories and CVEs that have been announced by the vendor, MITRE or other source to the community.