LoveMyTool - Open Community for Network Management and Monitoring

Why Can’t My User Access This Folder? (by Jennifer Kuvlesky)

An employee needs access to a specific file folder on a shared drive. You have no idea whether they should have access to this folder and you spend more time than you would like hunting and sorting through extensive sets of user and group permissions.

Another common problem with user permissions is when employees leave an organization. You need to modify their access rights or they can continue to access data – but what do they have access to?

Internal Employees having liberal access rights to sensitive information can be difficult to detect, and any misuse can be catastrophic. Unauthorized access could lead to:

• Access to private information
• Spread of spam and/or malicious code
• Implementation of unauthorized changes to data or programs or stolen data files

According to a 2011 Survey conducted by Ponemon Institute, 49 percent of breaches were caused by internal employees and 52 percent of security breaches were caused by internal abuse.

Network Monitoring and Analysis Strategy for the Cloud (by Jim MacLeod)

The cloud is a growing trend in outsourced computing power. On the upside, services can scale horizontally to handle load – but the cost increases with the number of servers. On the downside, there’s less visibility into application and network internals. The paradox is that, while it costs more money to run more servers, it’s more difficult to get the data necessary to troubleshoot and optimize to reduce the need for more servers.

While there are tools to allow packet capture in virtual environments, they’re generally not available in a cloud. Cloud providers won’t give you access to virtual taps, because public cloud multitenancy will expose data from multiple cloud customers. Fortunately, there are situations where cloud packet-level analysis is still possible, by focusing directly on the endpoints.

The goal of packet-level analysis in the cloud generally focuses on two things:

1. End-User Experience
2. Application efficiency of cloud-hosted services

Enhancing Visibility into Next-Gen Firewalls (by Jim MacLeod)

Businesses increasingly run on data, and data runs on networks. One of the key roles of IT is to monitor those networks for both health and content. Now, with next generation firewalls (NGFW), network administrators can not only enforce security policy, but also monitor network transactions closely using deep packet inspection (DPI).

There’s just one question: given its complexity, can you trust your NGFW if you don’t understand what it’s doing?

What NGFWs Do, in Theory

The basic idea behind a NGFW is to insert L7-specific knowledge into the forwarding decisions of a firewall. For example, http isn’t exclusively found on port 80: there’s also 8000, 8080, etc. Conversely, not everything on port 80 is http: there’s also instant messaging, P2P, etc. Therefore, a rule which allows TCP port 80 will block some http, and allow some non-http. A NGFW validates that the L7 traffic is http, no matter what the L4 port is, so a NGFW rule to allow http should work better than a rule to allow port 80.

Cloud Computing Security Issues (by Lisa-Ann Short)

Security and the fear of it being breached has been the principal issue holding back the expansion of cloud computing ever since its inception. Users are inherently less trustful of a computing service that appears less physically tangible than what they have been previously used to. While the problem is partly a lack of proper understanding of what the system entails, it would be grossly naïve to think that cloud security breaches are not a serious threat.

Increasing Popularity

Despite initial reservations, more and more companies are now embracing cloud technology. Additionally, with the release of Google Drive, a cloud computing service offering users 5GB of free remote storage, more and more individuals will likely utilise cloud computing for their personal day-to-day tasks. However, with this ever-increasing popularity come proportionally increased security risks.

Harry Sverdlove, the chief technology officer at computer security firm Bit9, likened cloud computing to a car on the road of the Internet, elaborating “that’s where the risk lies, because nobody owns the highway. You might have paid extra to drive in a private lane, but you are still on a public road where others can peep into your car window.”

Your Network is not a 'Fluffy Cloud' (by Tony Fortunato)

This was another popular slide from the Canadian leg of the Fluke Networks Optiview XG Tour.

Attendees really liked seeing the 'anotomy of a network' and the associated problems an analyst faces.

Basically the video says it all and you can download the entire presentation in a pdf format from here

 

Enjoy

 

Continue reading other LoveMyTool posts by Tony Fortunato »

Monitoring of Private Clouds (by Dirk Paessler and Dorte Winkler)

Cloud Computing  - What Do You Say, it can be monitored?

Get the complete Technical White Paper on "Monitoring of the Private Cloud" , Free!

Contrary to the public’s perception, the concept of cloud computing isn’t nearly as new as most believe, but even today, it’s rare that you find two people who completely agree on what exactly cloud computing means. Previous approaches have been called ‘outsourcing’ and ‘server hosting,’ however, obstacles such as insufficient processor performance, enormous hardware costs and slow Internet connections made everyday use difficult for widespread implementation.

 

Now, cloud computing has finally come into its own, thanks to technology like broadband Internet connections and fast, inexpensive servers that provide the opportunity to access only the services and storage space that are actually necessary, and the ability to adjust these to meet a businesses’ specific needs. Using a virtual server, which is provided by a service provider, introduces a wide range of possibilities for cost savings, improved performance and higher data security. The goal of such cloud solutions is a consolidated IT environment that effectively absorbs fluctuation in demand and capitalizes on available resources.

In the whitepaper “Monitoring of Private Clouds” by Dirk Paessler and Dorte Winkler, both of Germany-based network monitoring solutions provider, Paessler AG, Paessler and Winkler discuss the concept of the private cloud and how it differentiates from the public cloud.

 

Wireshark vs the Cloud (by Jasper Bongertz)

This presentation was recorded at the Sharkfest 2011, Wireshark Developer and User Conference, held at the Stanford University between June 13th and 16th.

" ... 'Cloud Computing' is aimed at reducing costs for server hardware, lessening power consumption and consolidating of a large number of underused, legacy systems into a few servers running a virtualization software like VMWare, Hyper-V or XEN. This presentation focuses on the challenges and the technical background of capturing network traffic, using the example of a VMWare vSphere virtualized environment where you can’t tell anymore on which specific hardware server the virtualized machine is actually being run. After an introduction to the underlying mechanisms of VMWare vSphere, various approaches and techniques to get to the packets you actually want will be demonstrated in a live environment – using Wireshark, of course! ... "

Jasper Bongertz is a Senior Technical Consultant at the Fast Lane Institute for Knowledge Transfer GmbH, an international training and services company. Jasper started working freelance in 1992 when he began studying computer science at the Technical University of Aachen, mainly in the area of database maintenance and performance tuning, database and web programming, computer networks, IT security and VMware. Jasper worked on countless network analysis projects with a total amount of about 1 TB of network data per year being processed, which resulted in the creation of a large training portfolio with a special focus on Wireshark. Jasper is a certified Sniffer Certified Professional (SCP), VMware Certified Professional (VCP3/4) and VMware Certified Instructor (VCI).

Right click to download the corresponding PowerPoint presentation.

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The Cloud - A Reality Check (by Owen O'Neill)

Cloud Computing and the Data Capture Infrastructure 

In its simplest definition Cloud Computing is “on-demand access to virtualized IT resources that are housed outside of your own data center, shared by others, simple to use, paid for via subscription, and accessed over the Web.” ¹    

 
Organizations considering a shift to this technology, despite the obvious appeal of shifting significant capital expenses to the operating expenses side of the ledger, must examine a wealth of issues related to the capture and monitoring of database and application traffic.  Troubleshooting, security, performance monitoring, capacity planning and compliance in the cloud are some of the new challenges this technology creates.  Getting access to the network traffic to perform this analysis is the job of the Data Capture Infrastructure (DCI).  The DCI is a system designed to copy traffic running through a computer network and send that traffic to probes or analyzers that can improve network efficiency or security.

Looking beyond the hype and promises of reduced costs and increased efficiencies, the network administrators, operations and security engineers, managers and other decision makers responsible for ensuring reliability and security in the enterprise environment have fundamental questions to answer.

• Do requirements for troubleshooting network operation issues decrease?
• Who is responsible for ensuring application and database performance?
• Will the cloud provider ensure security monitoring and regulatory compliance?
• Are changes in Data Capture Infrastructure (network monitoring access systems) required?
 

Is “the Cloud” Really That New or Different?

What the cloud can offer YOU! (by Josh Stephens)

The other day, one of my CIO friends was complaining about the lack of physical space in her data center –full racks, no place for power and no air/heating capacity.

She’s not the only one I hear this from.  It’s a pretty common problem for IT practitioners today.  The answer: The Cloud.  Yes, I said it – The Cloud.

 There’s certainly enough hype around the term “cloud” to make skeptics of all of us.   But there is substance and value to what cloud computing is intended to do.

What does it really mean?   

 

Simply put, it’s a style of computing that is highly elastic and scalable that you can purchase based on consumption and demand. 

There are different twists to managing this type of IT environment, depending on whether your company is doing a public or a private cloud deployment.

Getting Your Head Around the Cloud (by Stephen Brown)

Author Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Stephen Brown is the Product Marketing Manager for network analysis vendor Network Instruments with nearly a decade of experience in network management and security. Areas of interest include data loss prevention, network compliance, and VoIP management. Stephen is a member of InfraGard and graduated with a degree in Marketing from the University of Iowa.

Open any popular IT publication and you’re bound to see countless articles on how cloud computing is going to change everything from application management to climate change. With all these claims, it can be hard to understand what cloud computing really is and how it will impact network management.

In this article, we’ll cut through the hype and provide practical advice for monitoring the cloud.

What’s Old is New
The first thing to understand is that we’ve been here before. Terms like “private clouds” refer to existing practices of running applications over the Internet and across WAN connections. Going back even further, you might recall when time-sharing was the prominent model of computing. By allowing a large number of users to interact concurrently with a single computer, time-sharing dramatically lowered the cost of providing computing capability, and made it possible for individuals and organizations to use a computer without owning one.

The Internet has brought the concept of time-sharing back into popularity. Expensive corporate server farms and private data centers can host thousands of customers all sharing the same common resources. “New” business models, such as Software as a Service have become popular due to the cost/benefit ratio they provide customers.