Challenge
The requirements of this project were to design software to update and improve the system, as well as protect it from vulnerability attacks and improve overall usability. The software is an open-source solution tailored to the client’s needs. There were several challenges regarding legacy code analysis, database query profiling and shell-scripting requirements.
Solution
To address project challenges, our team performed a number of operations:
- implement detailed reports
- implement a new workflow allowing the admin to mark some software patches as ‘approved’ and automate installation of such patches to client machines
- optimize speed for some parts of the application
- redesign the software user interface (UI)
- integrate the solution with the SSO portal
- implement the API which allows for managing the entities from the portal UI
- fix software bugs in the original code
- implement a single-file multi-platform agent installer for Debian and RedHat Linux and OSX
In the end, we successfully set up a system management module that acquired, tested and installed multiple code changes to the administered computer systems. The system is now able to identify the missing security patches and hotfixes and apply them immediately to mitigate the risk. It is also possible to create policies to apply updates automatically at scheduled times.
In addition, administrators were given control over deployment of updates to operating systems and third party applications on network endpoints, allowing them to view the statistics of updates, create and manage customer accounts or see reports on the hardware.
The platform’s dashboard provides clarity to understand the summary of the current security status, key statistics and pending tasks along with the information on operating system updates, patches and third party applications available in the server and their installation status at endpoints.
As a result, now we can hold up-to-date knowledge of all available patches and determine what code changes are appropriate, ensuring that the patches are installed properly.