Experience shows that federal government agencies improve their security posture and reduce IT support costs by complying with the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC). Standardizing agency desktop configurations has proved very effective in limiting agencies' security vulnerabilities, simplifying issue resolution, and reducing operational costs.

This white paper, intended for agency IT executives, explains how the differences between FDCC automation tools affect security and IT costs. The paper concludes with a description of Lumension Security's Vulnerability Management Solution, which has received Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) validation as an FDCC scanner from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).