IT Infusion Inc.

Nagios is an open source host, service and network monitoring program. It contains much (not all) of the functionality found in expensive commercial monitoring systems like HP Openview at a mere fraction of the cost.

John Deere Case Study

Nagios can monitor virtually any type of device from Windows desktops, to managed switches, to Linux servers. Notifications can be made via email, pager, SMS, etc.

With a legion of active developers, Nagios is rapidly growing in popularity in the networking world. So before you drop big money on a monitoring system, check out Nagios (http://www.nagios.org). While Nagios isn’t a full-blown SNMP monitoring platform, it has a surprisingly wide range of functionality. You may find that it fulfills all of your requirements and leaves a lot of change in your pocket!

From the OTRS Web Site (http://www.otrs.org):

OTRS is an Open source Ticket Request System (also well known as trouble ticket system) with many features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails. The system is built to allow your support, sales, pre-sales, billing, internal IT, helpdesk, etc. department to react quickly to inbound inquiries. Do you receive many e-mails and want to answer them with a team of agents? You’re going to love the OTRS!

It is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and tested on Linux, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS 10.x and Windows.

Sometimes the best helpdesk software also happens to be free. If your company is looking for a web-based system for dealing with web and email based support or sales enquires, then OTRS may be a great fit.

Does your company have a wireless network? If so, then there is an excellent chance that you have a gaping security hole in your network.

Let’s start with the obvious: Wireless networks are inherently less secure than wired networks for obvious reaons. A hacker who wants to hack your wired network has to plug into your network. A hacker who wants to hack your wireless network just has to park outside.

The only way to secure a wireless network is to encrypt the data that moves across it. The first attempt to secure 802.11 networks was called WEP. And for many of you, that is the only kind of encryption that your wireless access point/router supports. Unfortunately, it turns out that WEP encryption is really easy to crack: How to Crack Wep

WPA was designed to solve the problems in WEP. Its not “un-crackable” but it is a significant improvement on WEP. If your wireless access point has WPA ability then this is what you should be using.

Securing Wireless Networks
So do we just throw wireless networks out the window? No, there are several things that can be done to secure your wireless network.

Segment your network – Your wireless network should ideally be treated as less trustworthy than your wired network. Computers that connect to your wireless network should not automatically have the same access to network resources as wired computers do.

VPN – Encrypt the data that you send over the wireless network using VPN technology. This way, if someone is able to infiltrate your wireless network, at least the data travelling over the network is still encrypted.

Upgrade to “Enterprise” grade WPA – If you bought your wireless access point at Best Buy or Futureshop then it is a consumer grade solution. These typically employ preshared keys and are much easier to crack than enterprise grade WPA solutions. While enterprise class solutions are more expensive, I think your network security is worth it.

Conclusion
If you must run a wireless network, then it is worth taking the extra steps to ensure that your network is secure. Don’t just assume that your wireless network is secure because it almost certainly is not.