File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) for ensuring Security and Compliance

The Context

• Continuous expansion in IT Infrastructure
• Prevention of malicious IT activities
• Ensuring compliance and boosting IT operational efficiency 

Today’s enterprise IT infrastructure is so large and ever-expanding that managing it effectively becomes a challenge. And any sort of malicious or unauthorized IT activity on systems and configuration files, if left unchecked, can have dangerous consequences.

What is File Integrity Monitoring?

File Integrating Monitoring (FIM) is part of a broader Information Security strategy that enables IT administrators to track any approved and unapproved changes made to the configuration and critical system files from the baselines. And if any prohibited deviation is detected, FIM enables IT administrators to roll back changes made to those critical files. Not having File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) in place is one vulnerable area that can have catastrophic effects on any organization. 

FIM for Compliance and Audit

FIM is mandated by multiple global regulatory standards, that require organizations to follow best practices to maintain data integrity, data security, and data privacy.

• PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) mandates payment card organizations to have File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) to monitor and detect suspicious changes that happen to the system files regularly.
• The SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) Act of 2002 specifies FIM as its core requirement.
• ISO 27001 (International Organization for Standardization) requires real-time FIM as the basis of data security policy.
• The NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation), one of the crucial American compliance bodies, mandates FIM capabilities for document security.

File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) with ARCON 

ARCON’s FIM tool, which can be easily integrated with any SIEM solution, helps track unauthorized changes in configurations and system files made on the user device in real time and roll back the file history if necessary.

Here are some of the highlights of File Integrity Management with ARCON:

• ARCON’s FIM is an automated process that ensures continuous verification of every system file alteration against baseline configuration
• ARCON’s FIM has the File Access Report capability that enables IT administrators to know the access details of each file accessed by the IT user
• The IT user access details extracted by FIM are based on several parameters, such as access patterns, access reasons, and the context behind the access
• The reports generated by ARCON’s FIM provide an assessment of the validity of the changes done to the files at a given point of time
• The reports are customizable and can be downloaded in PDF, MS Word, MS Excel, and CSV formats

Conclusion

FIM is essential for ensuring data integrity, but it is also a requirement to maintain IT operational effectiveness as well. Without FIM, organizations risk facing operational challenges. Think about a typical IT environment. If approved and unapproved changes to critical system files are undocumented or there are no alerts in place, organizations can face untoward risks resulting in IT ineffectiveness and operational challenges.