Single Source of Truth
About the Speaker
Client Services Team Leader at Oak Ridge National Lab
Chad DeGuira is the Client Services Team Leader in the Business Systems Group in the Information Technology Services Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has worked in Information Technology for the past 20 years in support, administrative, and management roles. He has been at Oak Ridge DOE facilities for the past 15 years with a primary focus towards systems management, with interests in substantial cost reductions based on efficient and effective use of computing resources through automated processes and improved workflow.
Is there a single source of truth for what objects and threats exist on the network, when data from multiple management and security systems reveal discrepancies? What is an acceptable patch deployment success rate in a diverse environment, who decides, and who cleans up the residual? Who is the SME for all the applications in the environment, or those necessary one-off configurations? With limited IT resources, without transparency, and lack of trust in the data available, the task at hand can be overwhelming, and can get lost in the static. ORNL has been developing an application for use by all of its users, that consolidates the pertinent data surrounding devices from many data sources, to build to a high confidence repository in a dynamically changing landscape. Vulnerabilities, configuration issues, exceptions processes, procurement and performance info, etc. is aggregated in a way to create a holistic view of a device, using the latest information at hand, in a format that is relevant to everyone. In this presentation, we will show a demo of this application, discuss the underlying philosophies and architecture, and the challenges we faced for such an endeavor.