Golden Assessment Library Overview
Modern enterprise networks are too complex, dynamic, and vendor-diverse to rely on manual auditing. The Golden Assessment Library (GAL) is engineered to transform network assessment from a reactive chore into an autonomous, continuous process. The overarching mission of GAL is to proactively prevent outages and ensure optimal performance and availability across your infrastructure.
At its core, GAL provides comprehensive assessment coverage by evaluating both configuration design consistency and critical operational health indicators across the network. It establishes a unified, data-driven automation framework that provides deep, structured visibility into network health across a wide range of technologies—covering L2/L3 routing and switching, Quality of Service (QoS), High Availability (HA) redundancy, SDN/SD-WAN fabrics, and Cloud environments.
GAL is powered by two foundational capabilities:
• Assessment Rules: These continuously evaluate the operational health of devices, features, and protocols to ensure that configurations, states, and neighbor relationships align with expected baselines. They are specifically designed to detect deviations that can lead to performance degradation or outages, validating critical configuration and runtime parameters against defined golden standards.
• GAL's Rule Discovery Engine: This engine continuously analyzes network configurations and topology to discover design patterns. It dynamically generates validation intents based on these discovered constructs (such as HA pairs, routing clusters, and security zones) and ensures golden config consistency across devices. As the network evolves, the engine automatically updates what it validates, ensuring continuous alignment with real-world deployments.
The Golden Assessment Library (GAL) v26.03 is a next-generation automation framework within NetBrain designed to deliver continuous validation, compliance, and operational intelligence across complex, multi-vendor networks.
🆕 What’s New in GAL v26.03
Version 26.03 significantly elevates GAL's capabilities by introducing automated security auditing, executive-level visibility, and massive scalability enhancements.
🛡️ Deep CIS Benchmark Integration & Auto-Remediation
⚙️ CIS Benchmark Compliance Engine
GAL v26.03 introduces deep detection for CIS Benchmark violations across diverse device types. This is not just an alerting mechanism; it is a full-scale compliance engine. To accommodate varying levels of required human oversight, the CIS solution features four distinct tiers of automation:
• Fully Automated: Both the assessment and the remediation are handled autonomously (e.g., instantly set transport input to ssh by removing any other method if already present for vty lines).
• Automated Assessment + Parametrized Remediation: The system flags the violation but pauses to prompt the user for specific environmental inputs (like a legal login banner string) before pushing the fix.
• Automated Assessment + Manual Remediation: The system successfully flags the violation, but the fix is too complex, risky, or architectural to automate safely via a simple CLI push.
• Manual Assessment & Remediation: These are policy-based or physical checks mandated by CIS that a software platform cannot natively verify via CLI.
🎚️ Execution Control & Tuning the Engine
Customers retain complete control over the engine. Using the Central Reference Data Automation Data Table (ADT), organizations can simply toggle off (just by deleting the row of Rule Index) specific CIS checks that aren't valuable for their environment, eliminating alert fatigue at the source.
📊 Output & Visibility
Centralized Compliance Reporting
All violations across the entire multi-vendor network are consolidated into a single, centralized Automation Data Table (ADT).
CIS Compliance Dashboards per Device Type
NetBrain facilitates CIS dashboards, that help visualize an organization’s adherence to these benchmarks by showing compliance scores, detected misconfigurations, risk levels, and remediation status in a centralized view. This helps security teams quickly identify gaps, track improvements over time, and maintain continuous compliance across their infrastructure.
Execution Strategy (Automation Insights)
For enterprise scale, performance is critical.
Execution is streamlined via Automation Insights using just two intents. Customers can choose:
1. Live Execution: Runs approximately 80 comprehensive CIS Benchmark checks per device directly on the map devices.
2. Cache Execution: Fetches compliance details instantly from the previously populated ADT.
📈 Executive & Technology Dashboards
Data is transformed into visual intelligence right out of the box. GAL v26.03 introduces:
• The Executive Dashboard: A high-level, single-pane-of-glass view summarizing overall network health, security posture, and compliance scores for leadership.
• Technology Dashboards: Deep-dive views categorized by technology (Routing, Switching, Security) allowing engineers to instantly spot anomalies.
🚀 Zero-Friction Deployment via Automated Categorization
Manual mapping is a thing of the past. "Automation Insights" now automatically provisions predefined categories upon GAL installation. This streamlines the initial setup process, prevents duplicate alerts, and ensures a highly productive "out-of-the-box" experience.
🌐 Expanding the Multi-Vendor "Golden Standard"
GAL continues to bridge the gap between complex network architectures and actionable assessment insights by expanding its vendor ecosystem. Full assessment support has been added for Alcatel OmniSwitch, seamlessly integrating these devices into GAL's Rule Discovery Engine.
💼 Business Outcomes
• Faster troubleshooting and reduced MTTR
• Reduced operational complexity
• Improved compliance and security posture
• Scalable multi-vendor network management
🔮 Looking Ahead
The roadmap for GAL continues to accelerate. In upcoming releases, expect the introduction of Persona-based dashboards, new assessments tailored for Capacity Management, official onboarding for the Cisco WLC, and the expansion of Auto-Remediation capabilities across all discovered rules.