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This other brand new session monitoring view lists all VPN Security Associations that have been currently negotiated in the firewall. The view lets the administrator e.g. to filter VPN SAs, create statistics, aggregate the table by any field and save VPN SA monitoring snapshots for further analysis.

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written by Tero Jantunen - 837 views \\ tags: 5.3, Feature Previews, firewall, Monitoring, SA, Security Association, SMC, VPN, VPN tunnel

There are a couple of new session monitoring views in StoneGate Management Center 5.3.0. One of them is the live monitoring view of authenticated users. It lists all the users that have authenticated themselves against the firewall by using the captive portal or IPsec VPN Client.

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written by Tero Jantunen - 1,370 views \\ tags: 5.3, authentication, Feature Previews, firewall, Monitoring, SMC, Users

StoneGate Management Center 5.2 introduce a new Appliance Status diagrams that enable you to have a virtual look at the appliance in the machine room. From the graphical visualization of the appliance, you can see the status of ports, type of ports (copper vs. fibre) as well as some additional information like if 3G modem interfaces are used in your FW or if your IPS appliance’s ports are currently in bypass mode.

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written by Tero Jantunen - 1,026 views \\ tags: 5.2, Appliance, Feature Previews, HW Monitoring, Monitoring, SMC, Status, System Status

In large geographically distributed environments it is interesting to monitor the status by site. Now there is a new way to do this with SMC 5.2. First you need to tag your monitored elements with Geolocation elements. After this, you will see “Geolocation” branch in the Status tree in System Status view. If you select any Geolocation from the tree, you will see on the map where it is located and what is the status of the site. You can also expand the element on the map to see the status of individual elements belonging to this site.

Setting the Geolocation this way for your private elements brings also other benefits. You can e.g. monitor the statistics as a Geolocation map and see e.g. how the VPN traffic is currently distrubuted in your environment.

written by Tero Jantunen - 1,269 views \\ tags: 5.2, Diagrams, Feature Previews, Geolocations, Map, Monitoring, SMC, Status, System Status

Third Party Monitoring feature was originally published in StoneGate 5.0 version and it got already many new configuration options in StoneGate 5.1. Surprise, surprise we have continued improving the Third Party Log Event management features even further in StoneGate 5.2.

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written by Tero Jantunen - 1,630 views \\ tags: 3rd party devices, 5.2, Feature Previews, Logging Profiles. Syslog, Monitoring, SMC, SNMP traps, Third-Party Monitoring

Connection and Blacklist monitoring have been refactored in StoneGate 5.2. At the same time when making these functions more reliable, improved the communication protocol between the SMC and engines and increased the connection table update interval, we have introduced a couple of nice features for these two views. Read more information below about how Connection and Blacklist Monitoring have been improved.

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written by Tero Jantunen - 1,120 views \\ tags: 5.2, Aggregation, Blacklist Monitoring, Connection Monitoring, Feature Previews, firewall, IPS, Monitoring, SMC, Snapshots, statistics

We have noticed that a lot of StoneGate administrators are constantly inquiring the country, city, organization information from these web portals:

• http://www.ripe.net/
• http://www.arin.net/whois/
• http://www.afrinic.net/cgi-bin/whois
• http://wq.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl
• http://www.lacnic.net/cgi-bin/lacnic/whois

In order to save administrator’s time, StoneGate 5.2 has now integrated whois action. You can right-click any IP address in logs, statistics or reports. The results of whois query are displayed in a separate info dialog.

written by Tero Jantunen - 820 views \\ tags: 5.2, Feature Previews, ip address, Monitoring, Shortcuts, SMC, troubleshooting, whois

You probably have already follow your favorite statistics diagrams via StoneGate Overviews. As you know there are hundreds of different type of statistics available and you can customize the diagram type, size and appearance as well as time period for each Overview statistics section in a really flexible way.

However, no one has time to follow the statistics 24/7. That’s why we have introduced a new “Alert threshold” feature. In SMC 5.2 version, you can graphically set a threshold line for any progress or top rate statistics. And when that threshold is exceeded, the system automatically raises an alert that you can escalate with StoneGate Alert Chains and Alert Policies as you wish. With the help of this feature you will detect faster the network anomalies such as link overloads, denial of service attacks, or any other unexpected network behavior.

For your information: from SMC 5.2 onwards, Overviews are global elements and visible to all administrators. Alert thresholds are saved to Overview element. There is a small glue icon rendered on top of all those Overview elements that contain alert thresholds. The Overview and Section names are also linked in the Alert that was raised when the threshold was exceeded.

written by Tero Jantunen - 940 views \\ tags: 5.2, Alert Escalation, alerts, Feature Previews, Monitoring, Overviews, SMC, statistics

StoneGate Management Center 5.1 contains plenty of new enhancements related to Third Party event management feature that was originally introduced in StoneGate 5.0.

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written by Tero Jantunen - 1,640 views \\ tags: 3rd party devices, 5.1, CLF, Features, Log Reception, MIB, Monitoring, SMC, Status surveillance, WELF

You have probably noticed that there are lots of useful shortcut actions in engines’ right-click menu. You can e.g. view logs from that firewall or access the engine’s current policy by right-clicking the engine and selecting the actions from the menu that opens.

Since SMC 4.3 this right-click menu has also contained actions that open Overview of engine specific statistics. But did you know that you can customize which Overview templates are visible there?

Read for more instructions how do you do this… Continue reading »

written by Tero Jantunen - 999 views \\ tags: Monitoring, Overview, SMC, Tips & Tricks