As many field auditors and security analysts will tell you, one of the most common mission applications of the Haystax analytics platform is conducting security assessments — ranging from on-site reviews of threats and vulnerabilities at important physical installations to evaluations of potential insider threats among personnel in an organization.

Assessments are a critical tool in managing enterprise security risk. Field assessments can reveal to trained personnel not only the most likely threats to a building or bridge or military base, but also the ways in which those facilities may be susceptible to a physical or cyber-attack. Likewise, for insider threat mitigation, they’re a means of capturing telling details from supervisors (and the employees themselves) that may be early indicators of malicious intent or negligence, which in turn could lead to a data breach, IP theft, sabotage or worse.

Over several recent product releases, Haystax has introduced multiple enhancements to its Assessments app to improve the workflows of field assessors, analysts and decision-makers alike.

A much-used feature of the Assessments app is the highlight. When an important assessment question is designated in the underlying template as a highlighted, the answer information will automatically be displayed on the details page of each asset. For example, the state of Florida assesses all 6,000-plus public and charter schools using the Haystax platform, and is able to see at a glance which of its schools are designated shelters during natural disasters because that assessment question is highlighted.

In the latest product release,  the Assessment overview page has been updated with a simpler layout for highlight answer displays (image below). In addition, the feature supports a label that shows the general subject of the question rather than the full text, for quicker comprehension.

Single- and multi-choice assessment questions now support icons as well as text for answer choices (image below). These icons, when present, are also displayed in a new ‘Badges’ widget on the assessment overview page. This feature is helpful if certain assessment answers are very important to be seen as graphical indicators on the overview page. (Note: Older assessment templates must be updated to specifically add icon attributes for each answer choice.)

A number of additional enhancements have been made to the Assessments app. They include:

• An automated notification is now sent via email to users who have been assigned an assessment by a system administrator, so they are immediately aware of the assignment.
• A new Export button enables users to download an aggregation of completed assessments into Excel, displaying all question, answer and comments-box text.
• When a new user is invited, the inviter may specify an assessment that the new user should have access to upon successful invitation acceptance.
• The notes on assessments have been removed in favor of using the standard annotations widgets that are on all other objects. All pre-existing notes have been converted to annotations.

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Note: To learn more about how the Haystax Assessments app can help you understand your biggest risks, please contact one of our representatives.