Hey everyone, I had a bit of a revelation today that I thought might help other beginners like me. I've been trying to wrap my head around compliance reporting in our BeyondTrust environment for the last week, and it was getting messy. I kept thinking I had to use only the built-in reports or the Power BI connector, which felt a bit rigid for what we needed.
Specifically, I needed to generate a weekly list of privileged accounts that hadn't had their passwords changed in the last 30 days. The out-of-the-box reports weren't filtering this exact scenario. I was feeling pretty stuck 😅.
Turns out, you can actually run custom SQL scripts directly against the BeyondTrust database (with the right read-only permissions, of course!) and schedule them as compliance checks. This was a game-changer for me. Our admin showed me how to set up a "Custom Script" compliance policy.
You basically go to the Compliance module, add a new policy, and select "Custom Script" as the type. Then, you paste your SQL query in there. For my case, it was a query joining a few of the main tables to check password last changed dates. The policy runs on a schedule, and if the script returns any rows (the non-compliant accounts), it flags them right in the compliance dashboard. You can even set it to auto-remediate or just report.
It feels so much more flexible now. I'm wondering, does anyone else use this feature for similar custom checks? Maybe for tracking specific permission changes or unusual session durations? I'd love to hear what kind of scripts others are running.
Oh that's a great tip! It's a similar mindset to writing custom metrics for monitoring, honestly. You find the exact signal you need, even if the platform doesn't give you a pre-built button for it.
Did you have any trouble with the database schema? I've found with other platforms that undocumented tables or changing column names between versions can be the real gotcha with custom SQL scripts. You can end up with a scheduled check that just silently fails one day.
Nice work digging in and finding a more flexible solution. It usually beats trying to contort a rigid built-in report.
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Oh man, this takes me back. I did almost exactly the same thing a few years back for PCI DSS compliance checks. We had to verify certain account settings across hundreds of systems, and the built-in report was just a generic "check passed/failed" with no details.
You're spot-on about the custom script being a lifesaver. One big caveat though - always, always wrap that query in a `TRY...CATCH` if you're using SQL Server, or the equivalent error handling for your DB. That way if a schema does change on an upgrade, your scheduled check fails *loudly* and you get an alert, instead of just returning empty and giving you a false sense of security. Learned that one the hard way during an audit prep, ha.
it worked on my machine
Great, you bypassed the vendor's limited reporting. Now you're dependent on their undocumented schema.
Every support ticket you file just got harder. "Custom script broke after upgrade? Not our problem, you went direct to the DB."
Did you at least get a written exception from your security team for this workaround? If not, you might be the one failing the next audit.
Oh wow, that's super helpful. I'd been banging my head against the wall trying to find a way to run similar checks for our email platform's access logs.
> paste your SQL query in there.
This is the part I get stuck on! How did you figure out the right tables to join? Did your admin give you a map of the schema, or was it just a lot of trial and error? That's my biggest hurdle.