Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Connector for the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer MBSA

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Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Connector for the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer MBSA

Found this little gem over on Microsoft TechNET. Its a COM plugin that loads with Visio 2003 and it monitors network shapes on the Visio drawing that contain either a network name or IP address. Any shape with these custom properties will display a Smart Tag allowing a network scan using Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. The shapes will become color coded based on their Security scan so you can see which computers need attention right from your Visio diagram. This is a great tool for Administrators who are having a tough enough time keeping up with all the Service packs and Critical updates that get released.

To create a new drawing for use with MBSA:
1. Start Visio 2003 and from the Choose Drawing Type dialog, choose the Network category and the Basic Network Diagram template.

2. From the Network and Peripherals stencil, drag and drop a Server shape onto the drawing page. After the shape is added to the page you should now see an MBSA menu item on the main Visio menu.

3. With the Server shape still selected choose Custom Properties from the Shape menu.

4. In the Custom Properties dialog fill out the Network Name property with a valid network name and click the OK button.

5. The Server shape is now configured for use with MBSA. If you hover the mouse over the Server shape a smart tag will be visible. This smart tag contains the same Perform Baseline Security Scan menu item that is also in the main MBSA menu.

6. Selecting the Perform Baseline Security Scan menu item from the smart tag menu or the main MBSA menu will display the Perform Scan dialog with the available scanning options.

7. The Perform Scan dialog will list any shape in the drawing that is properly configured for use with MBSA. Select from the list the machines you wish to scan, select the appropriate scan options and click the OK button.

8. During the scan the Status window is displayed showing the current status of the running scan. From this window you can also cancel the current scan by pressing the Cancel button.

9. After the scan has completed successfully, the report window will display the contents of the scan report that was generated by MBSA.

Each scan report is stored in the individual shape and is visible in the Report window when a shape that contains a scan report is selected, this way these shapes can be copied to other drawings and the scan report data will stay with the shape.