Big Fix Architectural Overview

Editor's Notes

• #3: For the past ten years, BigFix has provided high performance systems and security management software for organizations around the world and across vertical industries – the federal government, state and local govts, educational facilities, service providers, manufacturers, health care providers, retail organizations, and financial services firms. Because of our unique approach and innovative technology, we’ve enjoyed 40% year over year growth. In fact, we’ve got over 9 M devices under management across 800 customers worldwide. These include some very large and complex deployments that we’re able to show value in within days/weeks vs. months and years it takes other vendors. Our technology has earned 19 patents, 32 patents pending. To give you a sense of how BigFix technology is used, every day trillions of dollars flow through BigFix-managed computers within one of the largest financial services organizations in the world. Annually, over $350B of retail transactions are powered by BigFix technology. Additionally, tens of thousands of happy travelers can rely on hotel reservations being accurate, complete and confirmed thanks to BigFix systems and security management.
• #4: Specifically, the BigFix unified management platform provides real-time visibility and control via a single infrastructure, single agent and single console – in the next few slides I will show how that works, why it’s different and the business value it brings our customers. For now, it’s important to explain how that real-time visibility and control is applied to solve specific problems around four key areas. First, Systems Lifecycle Management streamlines IT operational tasks including asset discovery, patch management, power management, remote desktop, software distribution, software asset management and OS deployment. Secondly, security configuration and vulnerability management consolidates services including vulnerability management, automated security configuration management, and security patch management to cut costs, reduce complexity, and lower security risks. Thirdly, Decision Support Systems – Software Asset Management or DSS SAM offers a powerful solution for discovering all the software installed on desktops, laptops and servers in order to provide mappings between software usage and licensing contractual information for immediate, and accurate license “true-ups”. Finally, the Endpoint Protection suite provides organizations with a complete set of integrated security tools for preventing virus outbreaks, malware, data leaks, and insecure devices connecting to the network. Specific tools included are Anti-Virus and 3rd Party AV Management, Anti-Malware, Network Access Control, Endpoint Firewall and Data Leak Prevention.
• #5: Use this slide as part of a “Maximizing ROI” customer pitch
• #14: Most enterprise networks are highly distributed.  Users are connecting to your HQ site from across the Internet, while on the road, and also from remote offices – which makes security and systems management extremely challenging.  Additionally, most enterprise networks have bandwidth constraints – over wireless, shared MPLS, satellite links, etc - which makes pushing fat software packages and security patches over these latency-prone links a huge burden for the IT organization.  Moreover, many of these devices are intermittently connected – particularly those roaming laptops – which makes validating and updating their configuration virtually impossible. Finally, most enterprises have many different types of servers, desktops, laptops and handheld devices, making cross-platform support a must for any security and systems management solution.Unlike alternative solutions, BigFix was purpose-built to work efficiently within these types of environments.  As you can see from the diagram, BigFix Agents can be deployed on all types of devices, whether those are running Windows, Windows Mobile, different flavors of UNIX, Linux and Mac.  The BigFix Agent is the “brains” of the BigFix Unified Management Platform and continuously assesses the state of the endpoint against policy, whether connected to the network or not.  As soon as it notices that an endpoint is out of compliance with a policy or checklist, it informs the BigFix server and executes the configured remediation strategy, and immediately notifies the BigFix Server of task status (completed, in process, not completed).The BigFix Server manages policy content – delivered in messages called “BigFix Fixlets” and updated continuously via the BigFix Content Delivery cloud-based service – and enables the BigFix Operator to maintain real-time visibility and control over all devices in the environment – including instantaneous discovery of devices that aren’t managed by BigFix.  Because most of the analysis, processing and enforcement work is done by the BigFix Agent rather than the Server, ONE BigFix Server can support more than 200K endpoints, enabling customers to make the most of their security and systems management investment.  Whatever specific BigFix solution a customer uses – whether it’s endpoint protection, systems lifecycle management or security configuration and vulnerability management – it’s delivered via a single management console view. Additionally, new services can be provisioned and delivered via the BigFix Content Delivery cloud with no additional hardware or software installations or network changes.Deployment is straightforward, and is typically completed within hours or days. Agents can automatically be installed within minutes, without disrupting end-users.   Additionally, most customers deploy BigFix Relays to help manage distributed devices and policy content and as you can see in the diagram – an existing workstation can be leveraged for this purpose.  Promoting an Agent to a Relay takes minutes and doesn’t require dedicated hardware or network configuration changes.   It’s entirely up to the customer how many Relays to deploy and where they’d like to place them; however, we can certainly make recommendations based on business and technical considerations.  In addition to caching patches and other software updates close to end user devices, BigFix Relays manage the bandwidth used by BigFix to ensure that systems and security management tasks don’t consume all available network bandwidth.To a world accustomed to multiple, fragmented technologies and point solutions, BigFix offers an alternative: the industry’s only single-console, single-agent platform that addresses operations, security and compliance initiatives in real-time and at global scale.
• #15: Some of the installed products out there can sort of do this; we’re designed to do it faster, better, and cheaper. Next slide is a detailed example.