SCAP Workbench allows you to select SCAP benchmarks (content) to use, tailor an SCAP scan, run an SCAP scan on a local or remote system, and to view the results of a scan. The SCAP Workbench page notes:

The main goal of this application is to lower the initial barrier of using SCAP. Therefore, the scope of very narrow – scap-workbench only scans a single machine and only with XCCDF/SDS (no direct OVAL evaluation). The assumption is that this is enough for users who want to scan a few machines and users with huge amount of machines to scan will just use scap-workbench to test or hand-tune their content before deploying it with more advanced (and harder to use) tools like ​spacewalk.

SCAP Workbench is designed to hide the complexity of the SCAP tools and CLI. I can vouch for the ease of use of SCAP Workbench – I’ve been using it to run SCAP and find it the easiest and most flexible way to perform SCAP scans.

SCAP Workbench is an excellent tool for tailoring SCAP benchmarks. SCAP Workbench allows you to select which Benchmark to use, and then displays a list of all the rules in the Benchmark, allowing you to select which rules to evaluate.

In addition, SCAP Workbench allows you to modify values in the Benchmark. In the screenshot above you see list of rules. The Set Password Expiration Parameters rule is selected and has been expanded so that we can see the various components of this rule. We have selected the minimum password length rule, and can see the details of this rule on the right side of the window.

We see the title of this rule, the unique identifier for the rule, and the type of this rule. Since this as an xccdf:Value rule, it has an explicit value that will be checked. Since this rule is checking the minimum password length, the minimum password length must be set to this value or larger.

We see that the minimum password length in the Benchmark is 12. We can change this to another value, such as 8 characters. If we change the minimum password length check, the change will be saved in the Tailoring File – the Benchmark is not modified.

After selecting the SCAP Rules you wish to evaluate and modifying values as needed you run the scan by clicking on the SCAN button. The SCAP Scan is run and results displayed in the SCAP Workbench. You can also see the full SCAP report by clicking on the Show Report button, or save the full report by clicking Save Results.