nCircle Solutions Architecture
nCircle Suite360 solutions were designed from inception for large, global networks, centralized management, ease of deployment and maximum data security. nCircle solutions are appliance-based and agentless, enabling customers to get the system installed and begin receiving results within hours. The three tiered appliance architecture provides centralized management, a requirement for globally distributed networks. And security is built in; all the discovered data stays on the customer premises and is encrypted in transit between appliances. It’s no surprise that nCircle Suite360 solutions are used to audit security and compliance in over 4,500 of the world’s most important networks.
Advantages of nCircle’s Enterprise Class Architecture:
- Easy to deploy – deploying nCircle’s appliance-based solutions and collecting data takes hours rather than the weeks to months required for agent-based solutions.
- Easy to manage – since nCircle solutions require no agents to install and manage, users focus on results, not the care and feeding of the solution.
- Complete network coverage – nCircle solutions profile the entire IT infrastructure, not just those systems that can accept agents. From servers to workstations, firewalls and routers, network infrastructure, printers, and more.
- Low cost of ownership – nCircle solutions’ agentless design delivers unrivaled deployment and management, providing the lowest total cost of ownership of any competing solution.
nCircle Suite360 Architecture
nCircle Suite360 utilizes a three tier architecture; Device Profiler appliances gather detailed information about systems on the network and securely send the data to the management consoles, which organize the information and provide tactical reporting for administrators. The data is then sent to the Suite360 Intelligence Hub for advanced analysis and customized, strategic reporting for all audiences.
Device Profilers – nCircle’s Unified Scanning Appliance
nCircle Device Profiler unified scanning appliances do the heavy lifting of discovering all systems on the network, determining their operating systems, applications, open ports, protocols, vulnerabilities and configurations. Device Profilers are hardened, 1U rack-mountable appliances that utilize only flash storage; there is no hard drive, and no sensitive information (such as discovered vulnerabilities or configurations) is stored. The Device Profilers also enable customers to benefit from all the functionality in Suite360 including both configuration and vulnerability scanning without requiring separate infrastructure, reducing their overall cost of management, deployment, upgrades and maintenance.
nCircle Suite360 Intelligence Hub – ITGRC Analytics and Reporting
nCircle Suite360 Intelligence Hub (SIH) is the reporting and analytics platform for nCircle’s integrated auditing solutions. Gathered data from IP360 and Configuration Compliance Manager is consolidated in the Suite360 intelligence Hub, enabling an enterprise-wide view of security and compliance. SIH utilizes separate customer-provided hardware to enable the customer to size SIH to their data storage and reporting needs. In addition to a database and web server, SIH includes a web portal with built-in, customizable dashboards and reports to meet the needs of all enterprise audiences. SIH can also import and export data to and from other enterprise systems.
nCircle IP360 – Enterprise Class Vulnerability Management
A typical deployment of the IP360 vulnerability management system consists of a central VnE Manager console appliance, and one or more distributed Device Profiler appliances allocated based on number of hosts and network layout. Device Profilers discover all systems on the network, identify the operating system, applications, and vulnerabilities on each host, and send the discovered data back to the VnE Manager for consolidation and centralized reporting.
IP360's distributed architecture enables scalability from small departmental networks to the largest global enterprise, delivering rapid deployment and automated product updates to eliminate the burdens of traditional software maintenance. The distributed appliance architecture also localizes scan traffic to reduce bandwidth consumption and avoid network bottlenecks.
IP360 users can add web application scanning with WebApp360.
nCircle IP360 is an appliance-based vulnerability management solution designed for global deployments.
nCircle Configuration Compliance Manager – Configuration Compliance Management
Configuration Compliance Manager (CCM) deployments utilize the same distributed Device Profiler appliance as IP360 – in fact, the same nCircle Device Profiler can be used for either IP360 or CCM. Device Profilers profile all systems on the network, identify the operating system, applications, and vulnerabilities on each host, and send the discovered data back to the management server, a Windows-based software program.
CCM can even perform File Integrity Monitoring on IT systems, something that was previously thought impossible without an agent. Configuration Compliance Manager delivers all the power of agent-based solutions with none of the overhead and complexity.
nCircle Configuration Compliance Manager gathers configuration information from all IT systems using the same Device Profiler appliances as nCircle IP360.
Integrating nCircle Solutions with Other Enterprise Systems
nCircle solutions provide a feature-rich API (application programming interface) that provides access to the rich endpoint intelligence gathered from systems on the network. The APIs can be leveraged for process automation, external control of IP360 functions, and bi-directional integration with other enterprise systems. The APIs can be used to integrate with asset management systems, help desk systems, customized enterprise consoles and more.
