PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG (Paessler Router Traffic Grapher) - a program designed to monitor network usage works in the family. operating systems Windows

2020: Monitoring IT Costs with Monitoring System

Infrastructure costs consist of the cost of purchasing equipment and licenses, the cost of maintaining the system and consumables, the cost of electricity, Internet, telephony, rental of premises, the cost of IT services, and the cost of specialists. Accidents and large-scale failures can also lead to additional costs to eliminate the consequences.

To plan and manage IT costs, companies are implementing special solutions - IT asset management systems. Such solutions take stock of equipment and licenses, display related documents and accounting, take into account the costs of IT assets, and help plan IT budgets.

Device health and IT costs can be monitored not only by specialized systems, but also by monitoring systems. Monitoring systems are not a complete substitute for specialized IT asset management systems, but in some cases can act as an alternative way to control costs.

The universal network and infrastructure monitoring system collects information about programs and devices installed in the network, monitors the load of devices and equipment, traffic consumption, power consumption, helps prevent accidents, the consequences of which can be costly.

Monitor the status of devices, equipment, and applications on the network

When planning IT costs, it is important to consider the state of equipment and applications: which devices and applications are installed on the network, what level of device load, which devices are idle, in which network segments there are more frequent failures, how the volume of traffic changes, which channels consume the largest amount of traffic - all this is important for estimating IT costs.

The PRTG monitoring system automatically recognizes most devices located locally and remotely. With PRTG, you can see which devices and applications are installed in the central office and which are installed in branch offices, which devices are operating and which are unavailable, the level of device and equipment performance, the level of load and the amount of traffic. Everything data about devices and applications can be seen in real time and in retrospect over the past year, which helps predict changes.

Unified reporting

A single dashboard that provides access to data on the state of traffic, devices, applications located in central and remote offices and data centers, to electricity consumption indicators, to financial indicators, is useful when you need to monitor and plan IT costs throughout the company.

Universal monitoring systems collect data from different systems and provide centralized access to all data through a single dashboard. To more easily navigate a large data flow, PRTG users can generate reports with different types of data for different specialists. The system administrator receives a dashboard where the objects of the infrastructure segment controlled by him are displayed, the company manager receives a dashboard with financial indicators and the general state of the objects; the security manager receives a dashboard that displays the status of the security objects.

Control traffic consumption

The PRTG monitoring system displays the traffic volume, traffic sources, traffic consumers, protocols used. The PRTG stores the traffic consumption history, which allows you to understand how the current traffic consumption is characteristic of a given channel.

Administrators configure the alerting system to control real-time traffic. The level of traffic volume is set as threshold values. As soon as the traffic reaches the specified value, the alert system is triggered. The responsible specialist receives a notification by email or through instant messengers, or through other systems - each company itself determines in what way it is more convenient to receive such alerts.

Control of electricity consumption

PRTG is able to collect information about the input and output voltage, the status of the power supply unit, current strength. The sources of energy data can be either meters, directly devices and equipment, or power supply devices, or special sensors - this is determined individually and depends on which devices are installed in the company. Power consumption information is stored in PRTG - users can see how consumption has changed over time.

To control real-time electricity consumption and prevent power crashes and outages that could lead to additional costs, companies are setting up alert systems.

Monitoring of financial indicators

PRTG is able to collect data from databases, including data on the volume of purchases. The PRTG administrator creates a SQL query that will output IT expense data from the accounting and financial accounting system.

Managers responsible for IT procurement planning will be able to see on a single dashboard how much has been spent on hardware procurement and support, applications, and how these applications and equipment are used. This will help to plan costs for the future.

Accident monitoring

Eliminating the consequences of accidents such as fires or leaks in data centers usually requires significant costs. To prevent the occurrence of unforeseen situations, companies control the temperature of premises, humidity, smoke through the monitoring system. And set up an alert system. As soon as the temperature in the room rises above a given level or a humidity sensor is triggered, the responsible specialist receives a notification by sms, push or through instant messengers.

The centralized monitoring system PRTG allows the management of the enterprise to keep abreast of all key events in branches and offices located in different cities and countries.

2019

Troubleshooting the Vulnerability to PRTG Network Monitor Functionality

On December 16, 2019, Positive Technologies announced that its expert in the safety department of industrial control systems, Alexander Malyshny, identified a vulnerability in the PRTG Network Monitor software developed by the German company Paessler. This software is widely used in many companies in various industries as an auxiliary element that monitors the state of devices in the network. As of December 2019, more than 16 thousand servers with software data, including in the USA, Brazil, Germany and Russia, are available from the Internet.

The vulnerability of CVE-2019-19119 is to use the hashed password as an authenticating factor in some API handlers, which allowed access to the functionality of PRTG Network Monitor software.

As practice shows, this software is often installed on border nodes, for example between trusted and untrusted networks. After accessing the software, the attacker can retrieve detailed information information about the network nodes and their configuration. This gives him great opportunities for development. attacks It was also revealed that the password hash calculation function used is not cryptographic and it cannot be called one-sided cryptographic algorithm hash calculation. At the same time, the implemented mechanism is subject to collisions, which allows you to find the original password or collision for its hash, knowing the value of the hash and cryptographic salt (these values ​ ​ are stored in the public branch of the registry). OS

Positive Technologies experts have already found vulnerabilities in the web interface of this software in 2018 (CVE-2018-19203, CVE-2018-19204, CVE-2018-19410, CVE-2018-19411). These vulnerabilities have been assigned high and critical levels of risk.

It cannot be denied that for the smooth operation of modern IT Infrastructure it is difficult to do without software for its monitoring and control. However, when assessing possible cyber threats to an enterprise, auxiliary software cannot be deducted from accounts: it must also be investigated for possible vulnerabilities, especially if it is used to ensure the full-time functioning of the main area of ​ ​ the company, for example. APCS In addition to vulnerabilities in the PRTG Monitor software, other ASU similar software WhatsUP Gold, in which our specialists also found vulnerabilities, says Vladimir Nazarov, Head of Industrial Control Systems Safety at Positive Technologies

Vendor quickly fixed the vulnerability and notified its users of the need to install the latest version of the software, sending appropriate instructions.

PRTG Capabilities

Program capabilities as of October 2020:

• Collection of information on data flows and status of monitoring objects, with its storage in the program database;
• Data collection through most available IT, IIoT, and Healthcare protocols;
• Viewing statistics in the database and reporting in the form of graphs and tables;
• View monitoring results in real time or in a specific period of time in the past on different devices;
• Collect load data on the infrastructure hardware.
• Powerful notification system
• Advanced API for integration with other infrastructure components.

Output of results is possible through the program's own graphical interface or in Internet-. browser In addition, integrated the web program, server which allows you to receive Data from remote connection, and the built-in system authentications allows you to work in multi-user mode

After the release of version 6.2.2.983/984, the developer completely switched to optimizing PRTG Network Monitor, which became the successor to Paessler Router Traffic Grapher.