SmartXD IT Monitoring and Management

Sterling has partnered with SolarWinds® to provide network operations center staff and key stakeholders with the first off-the-shelf cross domain solution for centralized, global IT monitoring and management. The combined capability improves cyber situational awareness, decision making, and response times. The solution enables a single display, high side view from the SolarWinds® Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) interface based on data aggregated from multiple SolarWinds® Servers at different classification levels. Sterling CrossWatch communicates with the SolarWinds® API in each domain and uses SmartXD technology to facilitate the transfer of summary data up to the high side to support cross domain EOC views.

Features

• Cross Domain Unified Views – The combined solution enables the SolarWinds® Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) to monitor networks, systems and applications across domains from a single display.
• Use Existing SolarWinds® Products – Existing SolarWinds® products and user interfaces can be used as-is.
• Drill Down – The solution uses SmartXD orchestration to provide drill-down across domains to detailed views and management functions within specific modules from the EOC.
• SolarWinds® Capabilities – SolarWinds® modules are affordable, easy to use, and provide a wide range of features and capabilities.

Benefits

• Cross Domain Cyber Situational Awareness – The solution provides improved awareness, decision making, and shortened reaction time.
• IT Productivity – More systems can be monitored with less personnel.
• Easy to Use – SolarWinds® user experience is easy to learn and easy to use.
• Non-Disruptive – No changes required to existing SolarWinds® products.
• SmartXD – SmartXD benefits are listed on the SmartXD Overview

SmartXD Collaboration

Unity is a SmartXD application integrated with Microsoft Exchange that provides a unified inbox and calendar across multiple security domains.

Features & Functions

Unity provides unified views of inbox, calendar, contacts, and tasks across Exchange systems and security levels. Users can read, save, and interact with attachments without copy, filter, or transfer through a data guard. Unity provides full email functionality from the unified inbox including open, create, reply, reply all, forward and search. In addition, Unity provides cross domain calendar, contacts and tasks functionality from the unified interface(UI). The UI is based on the familiar Outlook Web Access (OWA) user interface. Unity can be accessed from any browser.

Benefits

Studies show that users spend more than 25% of their time on email alone. Unity makes cross domain users more productive saving $2,000 or more per user per year. Unity also increases user performance by improving awareness, time to action and collaboration. The Outlook Web Access (OWA) user interface is easy to learn, easy to use and can be accessed from a browser.

SmartXD Analysis

Smartxd-discoverDiscover is a SmartXD information discovery, access, and retrieval application that provides a unified search interface across multiple content sources and multiple security domains.

Features & Functions

Discover provides a full cross domain search experience with a familiar interface that resembles standard search applications, such as Google Search. The search screen provides a single text entry box for entering a search term and allows the user to choose the networks they wish to run a cross domain search on. Only networks the user has access to will show up in this list and the user may choose one or multiple networks to run the search across. Using a COTS search engine (such as Google Search Appliance) running on each network cloud, Discover can return results with over 200 different file types, elevating only the summary information for each item to the high side. Once a search is submitted, the results page contains summary information and links to documents, webpages and other data. Clicking the content link will open the result in a separate window on the correct network. All content remains on the originating network and can be viewed directly without copy, filtering, or transfer through a guard. Additional features enhance the user experience such as filtering the search results by date or relevance. The application offers an advanced search option that allows users to restrict the search using file type, date range, and site as parameters. Users are also able to view their search history and perform previous searches or view followed links, allowing for an easy way to return to work in progress. Although Discover currently connects to Google Search Appliances and Lucene indexes, Sterling will continue to add connectivity to other search providers and may develop a custom connector as part of any Discover deployment.

Benefits

Discover significantly improves productivity by providing a unified cross domain search for end users, eliminating the need to perform duplicate searches on separate networks. With the ability to search multiple domains from one seamless application, users gain enhanced awareness and “connect the dots” in a more time efficient manner. When accessing web content, Discover provides for a full web experience by directly accessing the original web content on its source domain rather than make a copy that has to be filtered through a data guard. This is becoming increasingly important as web content becomes progressively more dynamic. By accessing the original content rather than making a copy, Discover provides superior collaboration and information sharing capabilities. Users who access content through Discover work with the original source content, so edits are immediately visible to other users. Working with stale copies and having to move edited content down through human review is completely eliminated.