Reinforce your assets security by following the basic principles
There are three basic types of activity in information security that should be performed periodically to reduce possible risks to a minimum.
Periodic updates are one of them: as software components are developed and enhanced, they should be updated for many reasons, including possible vulnerabilities.
Backups are another one; no storage media can keep data indefinitely, and inevitable errors (both hardware and human ones) can result in unexpected data loss. Backups cannot prevent data loss directly, but they can significantly reduce the time required to restore a system to its expected capabilities.
Monitoring is the third principle: it allows not only detecting and foreseeing possible problems, but also gathering statistics to identify trends and long-term changes.
The above-mentioned activities are cornerstones of information security; IPNetwork Monitor can be used to help ensure all of them are performed as expected.
Updates
In modern operating systems, it is possible to check whether updates are available for the OS itself or for installed software components. By monitoring that information, required updates can be detected and administrators can be warned in time. In case of IPNetwork Monitor itself, staying on a recent release is also important from a security perspective, because newer builds include updated components and security-related fixes.
That also includes checking whether the OS requires reboot, whether SSL certificates should be renewed, and so on. Every time-limited resource can be viewed as something that requires an update or renewal at some moment, and monitored as such.
Backups
Backup copies are usually stored on external media, either on dedicated physical devices or in the cloud. In either case, backup storage should be monitored both for the presence of actual copies and for its performance and capacity. In IPNetwork Monitor, it is also useful to distinguish between ordinary backups and known good backups, and to keep at least some pinned copies that are not deleted automatically.
Typically, SNMP, HTTP(S) and generic (Script or program, Python script etc) monitor types can be used to monitor the mentioned performance values. The exact choice of monitor(s) depends on the exact situation. For example, IPNetwork Monitor can also create automatic database backups and a separate configuration backup, which makes it practical to monitor both backup creation and the storage location used for them.
Monitoring
A typical mistake is to ignore checks of the monitoring system itself. Talking about IPNetwork Monitor, it is a software component that can stop or fail for various reasons. Unless the monitoring setup itself is monitored, it can stop reflecting reality. One practical example is to monitor the IPNetwork Monitor service itself from another system, so that failure of the primary installation does not go unnoticed.
A straightforward approach is to use several monitoring setups on different systems. A less expensive approach includes monitoring the main IPNetwork Monitor software components, such as the monitoring service and its database service.
Conclusion
Feel free to contact us if you would need assistance setting up mentioned monitors.