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10.28.2007 at 11:29AM PDT, ID: 22923201

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7.4

Network Auditing & Alert Monitoring Software, RECOMMENDATIONS REQUIRED

Zones: Network Auditing Software, Windows Network Security Questions, Windows 2003 Server

A quick over view.
I will shortly be walking into small businesses and carrying out Audits of their network, after this audit has being done and handed over to the customer, hopefully the customer will then be asking for us to monitor their network 24/7. I envisage the networks to be all M/S some will be small workgroups and others will be domains with SBS server and others 2k and 2003 server standard with AD and exchange etc.

I require either one software package which will does it all,
or
2 software packages which will accomplish each task induvidually.

I could do with a software package similar to Belarc which gives a printable report on all PCs Servers on a network, EXCEPT I need to be able to connect my laptop to the customers Network and be able to run the Audit of all the customers Machines from my laptop as oppose to Belarc which needs to be run on each PC. It would also be an added bonus (but not critical) if this software could give out a printed diagram of the customers network, however I relise this is probably asking too much, but it would be a really nice professional touch to be able to give the customer a nice print out of their network with all their PCS/Servers/Printers/Switch's/routers/Firewalls/ etc listed.

I also require
A facility to be able to monitor the external customers network 24/7 ie externally; by this I mean seperate work groups and domains totally differant companies altogether some of which we may even not be allowed to setup a VPN into them, I will require this software to alert me externally via email etc of the usual,
Hard drive space/corrupt hard drives/network issues/exchange server issues/viruses/AD Issues.
It would also be handy on a totally seperate thought pattern here, if we could setup something at our office to alert us if the customers external network goes down, ie their link to the outside world.

I appreciate that the above will cost, however if anyone has any recommendations on FREE packages that would be worth looking at then by all means please let me know as I would certainly be interested in free packages, however I have a feeling I may have to pay to get the above which is'nt an issue of course but free is always welcome.

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Question Stats

Zone: Networking

Question Asked By: rpartington

Solution Provided By: twcadmin

Participating Experts: 3

Solution Grade: A

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10.28.2007 at 11:58AM PDT, ID: 20166020

twcadmin:

eEye Retina does the network auditing and has very nice reporting features. You can contact their sales department for consultant licensing...
http://shop.eeye.com/servlet/ControllerServlet;jsessionid=921c0f8861e748e6bfa8f7dc2edd7644?Action=DisplayPage&Locale=en_US&SiteID=eeyeinc&id=ProductDetailsPage&productID=51655400

As for the monitoring part, i'm really not too sure about software that accomplishes this. I've only written my own scripts for this

Accepted Solution

10.28.2007 at 02:40PM PDT, ID: 20166447

netdoc1:

I don't know of a free solution that will allow you to do everything you mention. There is a very basic network audit solution available for free from SourceForge called "Open-Audit" http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-audit/ as well as a basic monitoring solution from Nagios http://nagios.sourceforge.net. Both are open source. Both will take some time and money to get rolling.

As for the more expensive commercial offerings:

There are several solutions that can provide what you need. Most of them are expensive $$,$$$.
Products like Kaseya, N-Able or Level Platforms can provide both the auditing and reporting as well as the on-going monitoring.

Kaseya uses an agent on each Windows system (they have an automated install routine, no need to visit each computer or even to reboot the computer). This agent performs the actions scheduled and reports back to the "Kaseya srever" at your office or hosted by Kaseya. It will gather hardware and software inventory and be able to report on it. The database is extensible (SQL) so you can also do add-hock reports with any reporting program that can talk to SQL.

Level Platforms and N-able use locally connected hardware to scan all of the systems with WMI.

All of these systems cam monitor servers, services, performance and handle on-going patch management.

See www.kaseya.com, www.levelplatforms.com and www.n-able.com for more specific details.

All three offer free trial editions. Kaseya also offers a "hosted" version. There are many others. These are just the top three.

Good Luck. We use Kaseya for our clients (as well as other products) if you have other questions we can talk off-line. You can contact me via my website at www.tndi.net

Assisted Solution

10.28.2007 at 04:23PM PDT, ID: 20166687

Rank: Master

Chris_Gralike:

We use Nagios explicitly for network monitoring. On the part where you wont be able to use vpn`s for secure data transmission you might need to implement the solution locally. This might inflict additional costs on additional equipment and maintenance.

On the audit part, what aspects are you going to audit? Mainly network related topics like performance, utilisation, broadcast clutter? or is it a wider thing like growth on exchange databases, machine performance?

Is it allready known what your customer is going to gain by buying this solution? some questions that might have an impact on the product choice you are making. On the other hand, nagios works great for our company and gives allot of room for custom scripting. Im not quite sure this is always the best product for all companies. Someone needs Linux know how to get this baby up and kicking, let the maintenance this product might need.

Could you be a bit more specific on what details you would like to cover in the audit part. Diagrams are fun ill bet, but it would be nice if they ment something. And this might require you to read / diagnose syslog information, and or need to do some readouts using snmp. Then the questions arrise what equipment are we dealing with, are they even managed. And if so do they all use the same snmp traps or log format etc. I dont think there is an easy work arround / solution on the audit part when there are so many different tastes involved.

Anyway good luck, let us know if we can help ;-)

Assisted Solution

10.29.2007 at 01:52AM PDT, ID: 20168135

rpartington:

Audit side of things
Really the basics as these are going to be small companies ie max 30 users to start with.
So simple auditing
What software is installed
Which is licenced
What Service Packs are missing
What security patchs are missing
Star rating for security
Bit awkward for me as Im comming from a large infrastructure background to starting up with a colleague on the SME market, so we want to start off small to start with from 2 man outfits to approx 30 users max so we can cope, then after a year take stock and see where were at.
So this really is small stuff and I want to be able to show the potential customers what possible problems they may have in their setup if indeed they have any at all.
So most of them will be running workgroups or SBS.
I'am looking now before going out to customers so I cant be more specific really.
Ideally a monitoring option as I mentioned earlier to alert ourselves, however I anticipate most will go with the ad-hoc fire fighting option rather than the support contract being proactive.

10.29.2007 at 01:22PM PDT, ID: 20172957

Rank: Master

Chris_Gralike:

Star rating for security
I hope you like chalanges ;). I hope you know something about PEN (penetration) testing. There are thousants of tools that will "hint" you on possible security leaks in installations. Only if you did something like the CEH training you`ll find that its not only the installation and the network that make up overall security. Its also in stuff like "network drawings on walls", "Account information on printouts", "Desktops not being locked while the end-user is getting its well deserved cafee".

What software is installed
What Service Packs are missing
What security patchs are missing

You need some inventory tool for this. If browsed a bit and came across http://www.lansweeper.com/. Im not saying this is the tool you need, but will give you a general idea of what i mean. We actually use a custom written vb application that does the trick for us. And we use this because we can modify it as the need arrises. We might publish it if we feel that the application is dynamic and trustworthy enough. (still messing arround with the encryption). Just keep an eye on our technology blog http://technology.amis.nl and it might pop-up there ;)

" being proactive.
As a number of us allready adviced you ;) Have a good look at Nagios. It realy is a powerfull tool! and with the propper implementation one usually "thinks" we are being "proactive" from an end-users point of view. quote : "He was allready addressing the problem when i called" < New interpertation of proactive ;)

" Which is licenced
Good documentation and licence management. There are tools that can do the comparison. But you still need some proces and documentation to do this. If talking about 30+- size companies this little papertrail will just be a annoying part of your job but doable ;)

Hope this helps ;-)
-Regards,

10.29.2007 at 01:37PM PDT, ID: 20173076

Rank: Master

Chris_Gralike:

ps. sollutions offered are purly from the low-budget point of view. There are full capable applications that do it all. Seen allot of companies using stuff like;

Intuit Track-It®
TSC2 Helpdesk
http://www.ilient.com/free-help-desk-software.htm

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