XYGATE Compliance PRO (XSW) Reference Manual

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Chapter 7. System Policy Analyzer
The key difference between Data Discovery results and System Policies is that policies
allow you to track failures over a period of time, from discovery until the final
correction, and to monitor that new failures do not occur.
Because of the tracking mechanisms however, policies are most effective for the
discovery of exception items. Policies are generally negative based. By this we mean
that policies are used to track the status of exceptions that require corrective action.
For instance, the rule, “select all EDIT files” would return a set of items that are not
exceptions, but simply a list of files. Edit files are allowed on the system; therefore, this
rule is not
a candidate for a policy.
Conversely, the rule to “select all program files with the PROGID bit set and not
residing on $SYSTEM” may produce items that would be considered exceptions. This
would be the case if your system policy dictates that all PROGID programs must
reside on $SYSTEM. The result of any exceptions to this rule requires action to correct
and on-going tracking to monitor. This rule is a candidate for creating a policy.
Note: A maximum of 3,000 result rows can be moved from the result grid of a Data
Discovery query into a policy. If a query based on a Data Discovery Rule you
have created has results of more than 3,000 rows, it is inappropriate to convert it
to a policy. Please develop a more detailed query that results in fewer rows to
convert to a policy.
Assuming that you have just converted a Data Discovery query to a system analysis
policy, the following discussion will help you decide how to manage your policies.
7.1 Loading System Policies
Selecting the Update System Policies checkbox on the Advanced Loading
Selections tab causes System Policies information to be automatically loaded for any
system policies that reference this collection. (See item 14 on page 98 in Chapter 5,
“Collection Specifications.”) System policies are directly associated with a specific
collection criteria so that the data is consistently collected and checked.