Security identification using Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1

Are your PC's antivirus (AV) and antispyware or anti-malware (AM) programs actually running?

If anything should keep you up at night, it's the question of whether your users' desktops and laptops are protected from malware.

Previously we talked about how NAP can provide a defense-in-depth layer to protect your PCs. But if you don't have NAP deployed, what can you do to determine whether your AM solution is up to snuff?

One simple solution is to use command line WMI calls, or script a WMI action to call on Windows Security Center to see if your AM software is installed and running. However, this can be a very difficult task if you have more than two computers to check.

The Solution Accelerators team has solved this issue in the latest release of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit version 3.1!

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) is basically a network-wide agent-less tool that can help you quickly find out where your desktops and servers are and then generate status information about their security configuration and state.

The MAP Toolkit combines the strength of agent-less discovery and report generation capabilities from the previous generation (Windows Vista Hardware Assessment) with support for Hyper-V and SQL Server.

The pie-chart below is part of an auto-generated readiness report that illustrates the level of hardware readiness for Windows Vista upgrades across the desktop infrastructure.

The MAP Toolkit 3.1 also provides:

• Windows Vista hardware and device compatibility assessment
• Office 2007 hardware compatibility assessment
• Windows Server 2008 hardware and device compatibility assessment
• Microsoft Application Virtualization hardware compatibility assessment
• SNMP inventory reporting
• Support for Hyper-V and SQL Server

So give it a try, and let us know what you think!