Reports Library

The Reports Library offers rich dashboards providing in-depth analysis of access grants to resources, organization posture and risks, and more. These dashboards can help StrongDM administrators and auditors ensure compliance and detect potential issues. This article describes the dashboards available in the Reports Library.

All Dashboards #

Dashboards may be viewed by users with the Administrator or Auditor permission level.

To view dashboards, log in to the Admin UI, and select Reports Library from the main navigation.

The All reports tab displays all dashboards currently available to your organization:

• Access Workflows
• Auditor Insights
• Executive Summary
• Standing Access
• User Activity

Click on a dashboard card to view its contents. For each dashboard, you can do the following:

• View all metrics specific to the dashboard.
• Display data based on a specified date range.
• Download data as a CSV or PDF file.
• Schedule delivery of the dashboard report to a specified destination at a later time, in a variety of formats (PDF, zipped CSV, PNG).
• Search the data in your dashboards by manipulating the filters, or click into specific items in widgets to filter the displayed information further.

Dashboard Options #

At the top right of any dashboard are several options:

• Reload: Causes the dashboard to reload data from the cache
• Hide filters: Hides any filters shown on the page
• Dashboard actions: Presents options to clear the cache and refresh dashboard data, download dashboard data, schedule future delivery of the dashboard data to a specified destination, and reset filters shown on the page

Clear cache and refresh #

Metrics for all dashboards are refreshed throughout the day. The time of the last refresh is given at the top right of the page (for example, “3m ago”). The Clear cache and refresh dashboard action allows you to retrieve the latest data and refresh the dashboard.

Download #

You may view dashboards in the Admin UI, or you may download their data in CSV or PDF format. To download dashboard data, click Dashboard actions and select Download.

Schedule delivery #

If you wish to receive dashboard data at a later time, you may schedule it to be delivered to a specified destination (email, webhook, Amazon S3, SFTP), at a specified frequency (for example, now, daily, weekly, monthly, every last day of the month, and so forth), and in a specified format (CSV zip file, PDF, PNG). Schedule delivery in Dashboard actions > Schedule Delivery > Settings tab. Delivery via email requires the email address that is entered to be the email address set for your StrongDM user account.

The Filters tab is where you can change the filters of the dashboard to be downloaded. For example, you can set the dashboard to include data from the last week only, instead of the default 90 days.

The Advanced options tab presents even more customization options. Advanced options include the following:

• Custom Message: Enter any message to be included in the body of the email, if email is the selected destination.
• Include links: Select the checkbox to include links.
• Expand tables to show all rows: Some dashboards may limit the number of rows of data that can be downloaded. This option allows all rows to be shown in a downloaded dashboard.
• Arrange dashboard tiles in a single column: Select the checkbox to arrange dashboard tiles in a single column in the downloaded dashboard.
• Delivery timezone: Select the desired timezone for the delivered dashboard.

Search and Filter #

The Search field embedded into dashboard cards allows you to find and display specific data, such as the name of a user accessing a resource, a specific resource type, or a tag. You can enter any text or string into the Search field.

Similarly, filters allow you to display specific data, such as for date or temporary grants. Every active filter is presented at the top of each dashboard. When set, the filters are encoded into the dashboard’s URL (for example, https://app.strongdm.com/app/reports-library/reports/dashboard/auditor?Date=7+day), enabling you to share or bookmark your filter configuration.

To clear filters, click the Dashboard actions icon at the top right of the dashboard, and select Reset filters.

Metric Alerts #

When viewing a dashboard, you can set email alerts for any individual widget. To do so, click the Alerts icon (shaped like a bell) next to the action menu in the top right of the widget. It appears upon hover.

Fill in the criteria you wish to be alerted on, set the frequency, and save the alert.

Sensitive Resource Settings #

The Sensitive Resource Settings tab is where you define which resources are considered sensitive. You can use either a resource tag or resource name or substring to define a sensitive resource. After saving your sensitive resource configuration, any dashboard that you view filters resources based on your tag or substring value setting.

Designate sensitive resources by resource tag #

When designating sensitive resources by resource tag, enter your desired tag in the format <KEY>=<VALUE> (for example, sensitive=true). The value is optional and may be left empty. You may enter up to five tags, and if a resource has any of the specified tags, it is designated as sensitive.

Tag details #

• Maximum key length: 128 UTF-8 characters
• Maximum value length: 256 UTF-8 characters
• Maximum 50 tags per entity
• Allowed characters: letters, numbers, and spaces representable in UTF-8, and the following characters: + - = . _ : / @
• Case-sensitive: team=StrongDM is different from team=strongdm
• An entity can only have one value of a key at a time (for example, if you have two tags, sensitive=yes and sensitive=no, you can only assign one of them to a resource).

Designate sensitive resources by resource name substring #

When designating sensitive resources by resource name substring, enter any substring value (for example, mysql-02-sensitive or Postgres-exampleapp-4). The system checks for this value in all resource names and displays the matched resources in dashboards.

Access Workflows #

The Access Workflows dashboard provides a summary of how temporary access granted by Access Workflows is being used in the organization.

With the Access Workflows dashboard, StrongDM admins can:

• View a summary of active access grants and access requests.
• Filter results based on status (pending, expired, denied, or revoked) of access grants or access requests.
• Filter results to show access grants approved by a particular approver.
• Filter results to show only grants that are active or inactive.
• Audit all requests made by a user or for a resource or workflow.
• Select a time range of up to 13 months for review.
• Export data in the format that works for your organization.

The following Access Workflows metrics are available in exported dashboards.

Auditor Insights #

The Auditor Insights dashboard displays information about all the roles, users, resources, and tags in an environment. This information helps companies to run external audits and understand who has access to which resources.

With the Auditor Insights dashboard, StrongDM admins and auditors can:

• View the many relationships between roles, users, resources, and tags.
• View the roles assigned to a user or set of users.
• View the roles that grant access to a resource or set of resources.
• View the roles that grant access to resources with a tag or set of tags.
• View the resources that a user or set of users can access.
• View the users who have access to a resource or set of resources.
• Filter results for a specific time period.
• Filter results to show access information from temporary grants only.
• Filter results to show access information about sensitive resources only.
• Export data in the format that works for your organization to meet audit needs.

The following Auditor Insights metrics are available in exported dashboards.

Executive Summary #

The Executive Summary dashboard provides CISOs and security teams a high-level overview of security posture as it pertains to privileged access management. The dashboard shows how many users actually interact with the resources to which they have been granted access. Access grants, resources, users, and sessions are shown as numbers, while utilization of grants, resources, and users is shown as percentages. As an example, a high number of grants with a low resource utilization percentage could mean that users are overprovisioned for access.

With the Executive Summary dashboard, you can do the following:

• View summarized information about user and resource utilization and activity.
• Review utilization and activity trends over time in order to take corrective action, if needed.
• Select a time range of up to 13 months for review.
• Export data in the format that works for your organization.

The following Executive Summary metrics are available in exported dashboards.

Standing Access #

The Standing Access dashboard provides information about how much time users have had access to resources. This information is useful for assessing security risks and determining which users actually need access to certain resources and whose access should be revoked.

The dashboard accurately reflects the amount of time (in days) a user has had access to a resource through any mechanism (such as roles). That amount of time is the user’s standing access.

Standing access is calculated as the number days of access multiplied by the number of access grants given to the user for a resource. For example, if user Bob has access to one resource through one role for five days, Bob’s standing access for that resource is calculated as 1 role multiplied by 5 days, for a total of 5 days of standing access. If Bob has access to that same resource through 2 roles, the dashboard shows that Bob has 10 days of standing access.

Standing access is simply how much access a user has to a resource, and it is unrelated to usage. Let’s say, for example, that the dashboard shows that Bob has had access to MySQL for 900 days, but Bob has had zero sessions with that resource. Based on that information, an admin may determine that Bob’s access should be revoked because Bob has not used it.

One way to revoke access to a resource is to view the Standing Access dashboard, and find the names of the resources that are not being used. Then, go to the Auditor Insights dashboard, and filter by those resources to know which roles grant access to them. The admin may then remove the user from those roles.

With the Standing Access dashboard, StrongDM admins can view:

• Statistics for each resource
• Cumulative standing access for all users
• Longest standing access for a single user
• Average standing access for all users
• Number of sessions per resource

The following Standing Access metrics are available in exported dashboards.

User Activity #

The User Activity dashboard provides details about user sessions.

With the User Activity dashboard, StrongDM admins can:

• Get an at-a-glance view of sessions within StrongDM.
• Find problematic sessions based on concurrency and length of sessions.
• Filter results by user, resources, and tags to review specific session activities.
• Filter results to show queries for sensitive resources only.
• Select a time range of up to 13 months for review.
• Export data in the format that works for your organization.

The following User Activity metrics are available in exported dashboards.

All Metrics #

The following table describes all metrics found in exported dashboards.