Security Dashboard overview

In Niagara, the Security Dashboard feature provides (for admin and other authorized users) a bird’s eye view of the security configuration of your station. This allows you to easily monitor the security configuration in many station services, and identify any security configuration weaknesses on the station.

CAUTION: The Security Dashboard View may not display every possible security setting, and should not be considered as a guarantee that everything is configured securely. In particular, third party modules may have security settings that do not register to the dashboard.
The Security Dashboard view is the default view on the station’s SecurityService. It alerts you to security weaknesses such as the following:

  • poor password strength settings

  • expired, self-signed, unobtained, invalid certificates, or certificates with incomplete chain (as of Niagara 4.15, also see "Viewing incomplete certificates on Security Dashboard")

  • unencrypted transport protocols indicating areas where the configuration should be more secure

Other reported data include:

  • system health

  • information on certificate usage and associated security warnings, for example, certificates that are not encrypted with a unique password

  • number of active accounts

  • inactive accounts

  • number of accounts with super-user permissions

Optionally, you may set the System attribute on the Security Dashboard license feature to true. This setting enables the System View of the station that provides security details for each subordinate station in the NiagaraNetwork, as shown here:
Figure 1. Example Security Dashboard View


The summary pane in the upper left corner of the view summarizes the number and type of security status messages that each station service generates. Each pane in the view provides security configuration data for a particular service. Typically, this includes a hyperlink to the service (or to a component) so that you can easily change a configuration. In cases where there is no component to link to, the pane provides no hyperlink.