Use draft assessments to fine-tune your data and settings when you begin your audit process. For more information about how to use saved assessments in your audit process, see Save Assessments. A draft assessment represents the first step, or stage, in the audit process. Draft assessments typically contain your initial findings, including any discrepancies that should be investigated before your review.
When you save a new assessment, it is automatically set to draft mode. You can update and change draft assessments as often as you want. However, changes made in draft mode are not tracked.
Use the draft mode to set up your assessment configuration settings to reflect the goals and requirements of your upcoming audit, identify discrepancies, and obtain internal feedback on your findings.
Publish an assessment
Publishing a draft assessment allows you to begin tracking any changes made to the assessment settings and findings. This Change Log provides an electronic trail that lets you ensure your audit data and resultant assessment is correct and accurate, and validate any updates.
Publish a draft assessment when it is ready for internal or external review by the audit team.
Actions and Tasks
Compare Assessments
Allows you to compare the findings and settings of this assessment against another saved assessment or the original policy. You can compare different types of assessments (draft, published, or approved). When you compare this assessment against the original policy from which it was saved, you can identify changes that have occurred since the assessment had been saved.
Edit or View Assessment Settings
Allows you to edit or view the configuration settings for this assessment, such the security checks this assessment performs.
If your SQL Secure login does not have administrator permissions , you can only view assessment settings.
Publish
Allows you to publish this assessment. Publishing an assessment lets you safely distribute your findings and explanation notes. When an assessment is published, SQL Secure begins tracking each subsequent change applied to the assessment. Use the Change Log tab to review this activity.
Refresh Audit Data
Allows you to re-run this assessment using different audit data (up to a specific point in time).
Remove Assessment
Permanently deletes the selected assessment from the SQL Secure Repository.
Remove from Assessment
Removes the selected SQL Server instance from the assessment. This option is available when you have selected a registered instance from the Servers in Policy tree.
Save as New Assessment
Allows you to create a new assessment that uses the same settings and audit data as the selected assessment. When you save a new assessment, SQL Secure lists the assessment in the Draft Assessment folder under the associated policy in the Policies tree.