ADX06 – Automic Hardening – Agents

Agents serve as the link between your Automation Engine and the target systems—and are therefore a central part of Automic Hardening. In this hands-on lab, you’ll switch agent authentication to LOCAL, set up a new Windows agent in a controlled manner, and restrict its capabilities on multiple levels. Through coordinated test runs and targeted restrictions, you’ll see firsthand how each measure affects jobs and file transfers. You’ll also review the existing CAPKI security measures for the ServiceManager.

Agents connect Broadcom Automic Automation with the systems on which your processes actually run. That is precisely why it is worthwhile to deliberately secure their identity, permissions and communication paths. In this learning-by-doing course you implement important measures of Automic Agent Hardening yourself – directly in a prepared Windows lab environment and with results that you can immediately trace in AWI, reports and logs.

Instead of just reading recommendations, you work step by step on a realistic scenario. You switch the agent authentication to LOCAL, experience the lifecycle of an agent identity and build an additional Windows agent in a controlled way. Afterwards you limit its capabilities so that only the actions actually required remain allowed.

In the process you learn the most important security layers:

  • Agent authentication for a controlled trust relationship

  • client rights for jobs and file transfers

  • targeted restrictions in the agent INI

  • CAPKI protection for ServiceManager communication

The special advantage of the lab: you not only see the configuration, but also its effect. Successful test runs initially show that jobs and file transfers basically work. Then you activate the measures individually and observe which action remains possible and which is specifically prevented. This creates a clear picture of which security layer takes on which task – without multiple settings overlapping each other.

At the end you combine the controls into a comprehensible Defense-in-Depth state. This helps you avoid enabling agents across the board and instead limit their capabilities according to their intended purpose.

The course is aimed at Automic administrators, operators and technical managers who want to make their agent landscape more secure and demonstrate hardening measures in an understandable way. After the lab you can clearly distinguish authentication, permissions and agent configuration, apply them purposefully and transfer them to production-like environments. If you want to not only understand Automic Agent Hardening theoretically but also try it out practically, this lab offers you a structured and directly comprehensible introduction.

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Does that sound interesting? Then get started today with PEM, Automic Training 2.0 and year-round Automic support!

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