Security configuration management (SCM) can help organizations do much more than just harden their attack surfaces against intrusions. This fundamental control also has the ability to make your audits flow more smoothly. Indeed, it allows organizations to pull reports from any point in time and demonstrate how their configuration changes and alignments help to support their compliance efforts.
SCM doesn’t help organizations with just one type of audit, either. As an example, it can support them in an in-house audit where staff members evaluate the organization’s configuration against a set of internal controls and best practice frameworks. It can also give them all they need to meet an externally conducted audit involving regulatory compliance standards.
To understand how, it’s important that organizations understand the difference between a best practice framework of security controls and a set of regulatory compliance standards.