The new Gluware® Intelligent Network Automation 4.2 release delivers security-enhancing features and capabilities in demand from Global 2000 enterprise IT customers. Security is consistently one of the top concerns of Enterprise IT including NetOps and network automation solutions must enable IT to identify, respond and prevent breaches and outages.
Based on our industry-leading features and capabilities, Gluware was recently recognized by GigaOM as the only leader and outperformer in their inaugural Radar Report on NetDevOps – Read the report.
Gluware’s new 4.2 release introduces:
- NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD) integration to identify multi-vendor cybersecurity vulnerabilities based on the discovered device inventory.
- Next-gen Config Audit provides a significant expansion of the configuration audit capabilities in the Config Drift and Audit application.
- API capabilities are also enhanced with RESTful GluAPI, now adding the ability to initiate Config Drift & Audit and pull results.
- Syslog sender capability to integrate with 3rd party logging systems
Gluware continues to expand vendor support helping to consolidate multi-vendor, multi-domain CLI, API and cloud network management.
Additional security features including SAML, OAuth and enhanced 2FA were accelerated forward into the previous release (Gluware 4.1). Gluware continues to focus on the needs of enterprise users to secure their infrastructure along with making the Gluware product more secure as it is used to replace legacy NCCM products.
Gluware 4.2 expands on several core capabilities and introduces new functionality including:
NIST NVD Integration
Expanding on vendor vulnerability reporting Gluware already provided through API integration with Cisco Support APIs*, release 4.2 adds integration with the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD) providing coverage for more vendors and platforms. This integration enables NetOps and SecOps teams to proactively identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities that may affect their network infrastructure.
NIST Integration Providing Visibility of Multi-Vendor Vulnerabilities
The Gluware Device Manager exposes this integration with the ability to discover the network, inventory the devices and now leverage 3rd party information from Cisco* and NIST** to assess security threats. Data-driven insights are also created using Gluware Dashboard and Data Explorer to visualize and create custom reports related to inventory and vulnerabilities. Using the Gluware application suite, users can then identify and remediate threats through ongoing audits, OS upgrades and configuration management. Gluware significantly helps enterprises strengthen their network security posture.
*Using Cisco Support APIs requires an active SmartNet contract and user-provided API tokens.
**Requesting an API key from NIST is highly recommended for improved performance, but not required.
Next-Gen Config Audit
The Gluware 4.2 release delivers a major upgrade to the configuration audit capabilities in the Config Drift and Audit application. Config Audit has been significantly enhanced to make it easier to create rules while also allowing for far more complex scenarios to be supported for configuration audits. You can define simple or conditional rules with logical operators and test rules before running an audit.
Any existing audit policy rules will be automatically converted to the new format. Additional new severity and permission level settings have also been added.
Next-Gen Config Audit Audit Rules with Logical Operators
Config Audit now provides:
- Update of the Config Audit UI – Updates the user interface and expands the total number of rules supported in a single policy
- Support for conditional language – Audit rules (required and forbidden) add support for IF⋯THEN⋯ELSE as well as AND/OR operators
- Policy RBAC – Adds support for Policy Level and mapping to role-based edit and execution permissions
- Device policy view – New display device details view for policy
- Device policy execution – New ability to view a summary of all policy results by device with the added ability to execute one or all policies from the Device Manager
- Rule validation – Provides a test tool to validate the scope and criteria of a rule
- Rule severity – Ability to classify rules based on the overall impact of the violation
These enhancements provide more coverage of complex audit requirements with fewer overall rules.
Enhanced Syslog Integration
In prior releases, Gluware already provided syslog integration with the ability to receive syslog messages from devices indicating a user went into config mode (type 5 messages). Gluware 4.2 expands the capabilities adding the ability to send syslog messages related to the health and user activity providing logging visibility of the running Gluware instances. Syslog support is integrated with the Gluware Control platform as part of the base functionality. In the Gluware Organization Settings, the new Logging menu enables the ability to configure which syslog messages to send along with the server IP(s) and protocol settings.
GluAPI Enhancements
GluAPI provides a RESTful endpoint to interact with Gluware programmatically via REST calls. GluAPI has been enhanced across multiple functionalities including Config Drift and Audit, Config Modeling, Data Explorer and more.
GluAPI documentation can be found on your system at:
https://{your system name or IP }/api-docs/
There is also swagger/OAS documentation available at:
https://{your system name or IP }/api/swagger.json
Additional Features
Device Manager
- An Audit Summary View is now available in Device Details to report the current results of each Audit policy run on the device. Each policy can be executed again from this view.
- The Device list and Data Explorer can also report the summary results from all Audits.
Ad-Hoc Query
- Adds the option to select “Last Run” from the query dropdown. “Last Run” will update the device selection and load the results from your last execution.
Config Drift
- Email notifications from scheduled Captures now include the “drift” differences as an attachment.
Scheduler
- Adds the ability to modify the (targets) of a scheduled event, convert static to dynamic list and vice versa.
Config Modeling
- Device names and custom field names can now be included in regex conditions in CLI Command Groups. This allows provisioning based on a device to a custom field name.
- Custom fields can now be referenced in CLI Command Lists.
File Server
- You can now manage individual SSH Kex algorithms, SSH ciphers, and MACs algorithms in Settings > Organization > OS Manager.
- Some encryption algorithms have been disabled by default since they may expose security vulnerabilities. Customers will need to review and enable those that may be required by older devices or firmware in your organization.
System Settings
- Gluware 4.2 supports new permissions and increases the granularity of actions that may be assigned to custom roles.
For more information, watch the Gluware webinar on the 4.2 release, available on-demand and also be sure to read the release notes and Users Guide.
To connect with the Gluware team – request a demo, a free trial or a Test Drive.
