SKNS
v2.0
Skans Docs/Getting Started/Quickstart
Getting Started

Quickstart

This is the whole happy path in one place: plug in an appliance, stand up the site, and give real devices their own identities. Budget about 15 minutes, most of which is the appliance building itself while you watch a progress bar.

Note

Prefer the detail? Each step links to its full guide. This page is the skim.

1. Plug in and open (1 min) #

Rack the appliance, patch it into the enclave switch, power it on, and browse to it from a machine on the network. The setup wizard opens.

2. Confirm the network (1 min) #

The wizard shows the network it detected — subnet, gateway, whether a directory already exists, and any devices it can see. Confirm it, or pick the enclave NIC if there’s more than one.

3. Name the site (1 min) #

Type a site name and set (or accept a generated) admin password. Press Set up this site.

Warning

The generated credentials are shown once and printed on the final report — save them off the appliance before you move on.

4. Let it build (5–10 min) #

The appliance stands itself up, unattended, through a couple of reboots. You’ll see the foundations go green:

TEXT
✓ Identity service ready
✓ Certificate authority ready
✓ Network trust published
✓ Time & naming ready

Full detail: Installation.

5. Find & secure devices (a few min) #

The wizard discovers what’s on the enclave and lists each device — name, type, vendor, IP, and status. It classifies by what the device actually is, so a Windows server isn’t mistaken for a workstation, and it names devices from the directory, never a bare IP.

Two lanes run automatically:

  • Agentless devices (cameras, IoT, OT). Skans auto-detects the vendor (you confirm it in a picker if needed), pushes a certificate from the built-in CA using that vendor’s driver, and verifies the device is serving it. Monitoring attaches over the device’s native protocol. → Enroll a device
  • Windows servers & workstations. The Monitor step offers Deploy agent, which pushes the Skans agent over GPO. You approve the agent when it checks in. → Install & approve the Windows agent

Press Secure all, or work device by device. Each device shows a plain status: ✓ secured, ⚠ needs attention (with a reason), or ✗ unreachable (with a fix).

6. Done — see your evidence #

The final step shows a Security Score (green / amber / red by NIST area) and a printable “what got secured” report. From here you can generate the full NIST/CMMC evidence pack — an assessment-ready bundle built from the site’s live state.

What you just built #

In fifteen minutes the enclave went from unmanaged to a governed site with:

  • a directory and certificate authority of its own,
  • a real identity on every device it could reach,
  • a hardened, access-controlled network,
  • and audit-ready evidence that it’s all in place.

Next #