openwatch

README

OpenWatch

The Compliance Operating System — See Everything, Continuously.

---

An auditor asks: "Were these 200 servers compliant with STIG on January 15th?"

With manual processes, that question takes a week to answer. With point-in-time scanning tools, you can only answer if you happened to scan that day. With OpenWatch, it is a query — executed in seconds, backed by machine-verifiable evidence, exportable as CSV, JSON, or PDF.

OpenWatch is the compliance operating system for teams managing Linux infrastructure under STIG, CIS, NIST 800-53, PCI-DSS, and FedRAMP. It connects to your servers over SSH, runs 630 compliance checks via the Kensa engine, and provides continuous visibility into compliance posture — not just what's passing now, but what was passing last Tuesday, what drifted since your last assessment, and what needs attention before your next one.

Project status — Go rebuild, generally available. OpenWatch is a single Go binary that serves both the REST API and the embedded React UI (the original Python/FastAPI implementation was archived out of the repo on 2026-06-05). The Go tree lives at the repo root: Go 1.26 backend (cmd/, internal/), React 19 + TanStack frontend (frontend/), PostgreSQL-only. The current version is 0.4.0, on the general-availability line that opened with 0.2.0.

The Problem with Point-in-Time Compliance

Most compliance tools scan your systems and tell you what's passing today. That's useful, but it is not enough:

• The posture decays immediately. A server that passed STIG on Monday can drift by Wednesday. Without continuous monitoring, you won't know until the next audit.
• Historical questions are unanswerable. "Were we compliant during the assessment window?" requires re-scanning, which only tells you about now, not then.
• Exceptions live in spreadsheets. Approved deviations from policy are tracked in email threads and shared drives, disconnected from the scanning tool.
• Drift is invisible. When a rule that was passing starts failing, no one notices until an assessor finds it.
• Evidence is assembled, not generated. Teams spend days before an audit compiling screenshots and command outputs into binders.

OpenWatch solves all five problems.

What OpenWatch Does

Continuous Compliance Posture

Scan your fleet on a schedule, or let OpenWatch adapt the cadence to each host's compliance state: worse posture scans more often. The defaults run from every 4 hours for a critical host to every 48 hours for a fully compliant one, and are operator-tunable per band. The posture dashboard updates in real time.

Temporal Compliance Queries

Ask "What was our STIG compliance on February 1st?" and get an answer backed by historical scan data. OpenWatch captures daily posture snapshots and stores the full history. Compliance posture is not a snapshot; it is a timeline.

Compliance Drift Detection

When a rule that was passing starts failing, OpenWatch raises an alert automatically. Track drift events through acknowledgment to resolution. Know the moment your posture degrades — not weeks later when an assessor tells you.

Governance and Exception Management

Some controls require approved exceptions. OpenWatch provides structured exception workflows: request, approve, reject, time-limit, revoke — all with an audit trail. No more tracking waivers in spreadsheets.

Audit-Ready Evidence and Exports

Every check captures the exact command executed, the system's raw output, the expected value, and the actual value. Export compliance data as CSV, JSON, or PDF. Build saved queries for recurring audit requests. The evidence is generated by the scan, not assembled after the fact.

Multi-Framework, Single Scan

One scan maps findings to STIG, CIS, NIST 800-53, PCI-DSS, and FedRAMP simultaneously. The same evidence satisfies multiple assessors. No duplicate scans, no duplicate reports.

How It Compares

OpenWatch is a compliance platform — it manages the lifecycle of compliance across a fleet, not just the scan itself. This table compares approaches to managing ongoing compliance posture:

	OpenWatch	Manual Processes	Point-in-Time Scanners	Enterprise Platforms (Tenable, etc.)
Multi-host scanning	One click, 100+ hosts	SSH into each server	Script it yourself	Agent or credentialed scan
Dashboard and history	Built-in	Spreadsheets	None	Commercial dashboard
Temporal compliance	Query any date	Impossible	Not available	Limited
Drift detection	Automatic alerts	Manual discovery	Not available	Partial
Exception workflows	Structured with audit trail	Spreadsheets and email	Not available	Not available
Framework coverage	STIG + CIS + NIST + PCI + FedRAMP	Whatever you check	Per-benchmark profiles	CIS/STIG/PCI
Remediation	23 typed mechanisms with rollback	Run commands by hand	Basic scripts	Not available
Evidence model	Structured JSON per check	Screenshots	Varies by tool	PDF reports
Setup time	10 minutes	N/A	Varies	Days + licensing
Cost	Free (Community) / Paid (Pro)	Labor	Free - varies	$50K+/year

Note: OpenWatch's scanning engine is Kensa, which takes a different architectural approach than SCAP-based tools. Kensa separates rules from implementations, treats frameworks as metadata, and detects host capabilities at runtime. Organizations with SCAP mandate requirements can use SCAP tools for assessment alongside OpenWatch for remediation, governance, and continuous monitoring.

Deploy in 10 minutes

Requirements: a Linux host (RHEL/Rocky/Fedora/Oracle or Ubuntu/Debian), PostgreSQL, and 4 GB RAM. No Docker, Podman, or containers are required.

sudo dnf install ./openwatch-*.rpm     # RHEL / Rocky / Fedora / Oracle
sudo apt install ./openwatch_*.deb     # Ubuntu / Debian

sudo openwatch migrate                 # apply database migrations
sudo openwatch create-admin \          # create the first admin user
  --username admin --email you@example.com --password '...'
sudo systemctl enable --now openwatch  # start at boot

Open https://localhost:8443 and sign in with the admin user you created.

Run your first scan

1. Add credentials — Settings > System Credentials > add your SSH user/key
2. Add a host — Hosts > Add Host > enter IP, select credentials
3. Scan — Click Scan on the host card

Results appear in under a minute. OpenWatch ships with 630 built-in Kensa rules — human-readable YAML, not XML — ready to go.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                       You / Your Team                       │
└──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
┌──────────────────────────▼──────────────────────────────────┐
│  OpenWatch UI (React 19 · TanStack Router/Query · MUI)      │
│  Dashboard · Posture · Alerts · Exceptions · Reports        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  OpenWatch API (Go 1.26 · REST)                             │
│  Auth · RBAC · Scheduling · Audit · Exports                 │
├────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Kensa Engine          │  Worker (Go)                       │
│  630 YAML rules        │  Async scanning                   │
│  23 remediation types  │  Adaptive scheduling              │
│  Evidence capture      │  Drift detection                  │
├────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────┤
│  PostgreSQL                                                 │
│  All persistent data + native job queue (SKIP LOCKED)      │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
                      SSH (port 22)
                           │
┌──────────────────────────▼──────────────────────────────────┐
│   Your Linux servers (RHEL, Rocky, Alma, Oracle, Ubuntu)   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Security

OpenWatch is built for environments where security is the requirement, not an afterthought:

Control	Implementation
Encryption at rest	AES-256-GCM for stored credentials and sensitive data
Authentication	RS256 JWT with Argon2id password hashing
Multi-factor auth	TOTP (Google Authenticator, Authy) with backup codes
FIPS 140-3	Optional FIPS build (make build-fips) using the Go-native FIPS module
Authorization	RBAC with 5 built-in roles (viewer, auditor, ops_lead, security_admin, admin) and 67 permissions; custom roles supported
Audit logging	All authentication, authorization, and compliance events logged
Rate limiting	Per-IP sliding window on the auth endpoints (login, MFA verify): 20 attempts/min, then 429
Transport	TLS 1.2+ with FIPS cipher suites in production
Target security	No agents — scans over SSH, nothing installed on targets

Report vulnerabilities to security@hanalyx.com.

API-First Design

OpenWatch exposes a versioned REST API under /api/v1/. The contract lives in api/openapi.yaml (the source of truth). Everything you can do in the UI, you can automate:

# Authenticate
TOKEN=$(curl -sk -X POST https://localhost:8443/api/v1/auth/login \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username":"admin","password":"..."}' | jq -r '.access_token')

# Add a host
HOST_ID=$(curl -sk -X POST https://localhost:8443/api/v1/hosts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"hostname":"web-01","ip_address":"192.168.1.10","port":22}' | jq -r '.id')

# List hosts
curl -sk https://localhost:8443/api/v1/hosts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" | jq '.'

Integrate compliance scanning into CI/CD pipelines, SIEM platforms, or custom dashboards.

Administration

OpenWatch is a single binary. Service lifecycle is managed by systemd; admin operations are subcommands of the openwatch binary itself:

# Service lifecycle (systemd unit installed by the RPM/DEB)
systemctl start openwatch        # start the service
systemctl status openwatch       # service status
journalctl -u openwatch -f       # follow logs

# Admin operations (openwatch subcommands)
openwatch migrate                # apply pending database migrations
openwatch create-admin \         # create the first admin user
  --username admin --email admin@example.com --password '...'
openwatch check-config           # validate and print the resolved config
openwatch --version              # build metadata

# Health
curl -k https://localhost:8443/api/v1/health

Production Deployment

The native package (installed above) lays down the openwatch binary (API + embedded UI), a hardened systemd unit, default config under /etc/openwatch/, and a dedicated system user. Before production use, replace the demo TLS cert under /etc/openwatch/tls/ with your own; FIPS 140-3 builds come from make build-fips. See docs/guides/PRODUCTION_DEPLOYMENT.md and docs/guides/SECURITY_HARDENING.md.

Monitoring

OpenWatch exposes a health endpoint for external liveness checks. It returns 200 when healthy and 503 when a dependency (such as the database) is down:

curl -k https://localhost:8443/api/v1/health
# {"status":"healthy","db_connected":true,"version":"..."}

See docs/guides/MONITORING_SETUP.md for the health/version endpoints, fleet liveness, and audit-event monitoring. (A Prometheus /metrics endpoint is on the roadmap, not in the current build.)

Documentation

Topic	Link
API contract	api/openapi.yaml (source of truth)
API guide	docs/guides/API_GUIDE.md
Full documentation	hanalyx.github.io/OpenWatch
Quickstart	docs/guides/QUICKSTART.md
Production deployment	docs/guides/PRODUCTION_DEPLOYMENT.md
Security hardening	docs/guides/SECURITY_HARDENING.md
Behavioral specs (engineering SSOT)	specs/, registered in specter.yaml

Part of the Hanalyx Compliance Platform

OpenWatch is the compliance operating system — the dashboard, the scheduler, the governance layer. Kensa is the compliance engine underneath — 630 rules, 27 remediation mechanisms, automatic rollback, all over SSH.

If you want a CLI that integrates into scripts and pipelines, start with Kensa. If you want a platform for your team with a dashboard, scheduling, and audit workflows, start here.

Community

Have a question, idea, or want to share how you're using OpenWatch?

Join the Discussion

• Q&A — Get help with setup, scanning, and configuration
• Ideas — Propose features and integrations
• Show and Tell — Share your compliance workflows

Found a bug? Open an issue.

Contributing

The Go tree lives at the repo root:

# Backend (Go 1.26)
go build ./...
go test ./internal/... -count=1
specter check          # spec schema validation

# Frontend (React 19 + TanStack + Vite)
cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev            # http://localhost:5173
npx vitest run

The legacy Python implementation is archived outside the repo and is no longer built or tested here. See CONTRIBUTING.md before submitting a PR.

License

OpenWatch is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (see LICENSE and NOTICE).

• Free to use, modify, self-host, and redistribute under Apache 2.0.
• The compiled binary statically links the Kensa compliance engine, which is BSL-1.1, so a binary distribution is a combined Apache/BSL work (see NOTICE).

Third-party dependency licenses: THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. Commercial inquiries: legal@hanalyx.com