Securing your network infrastructure and services is one of
the most important strategic goals for the stability of any network. And in
order to achieve the network security of your environment, you should have
insight visibility and use different network security tools.
During this article we will explore the best network
security tools in the market that help you to achieve the visibility and
enhance the security levels within your network
Argus
Argus is one of free network security tools which provides
Real Time Flow Monitor that is designed to perform
comprehensive data network traffic auditing.
ARGUS stands for Audit Record Generation and Usage System
Argus depends on processing packet data and provides summary
network flow data. So If you want to
analyze a packet and need to understand what is going on, Argus is an excellent
method of looking at aspects of the data that you can't readily get from packet
analyzers. How many hosts are communicating, who is talking to whom, how
frequent this is happening, is one address sending all the traffic, are they
doing the bad thing? Argus is designed to generate network flow status
information that can answer these and a lot more questions that you might have.
Nessus
Tenable had developed Nessus which is an open source vulnerability
scanner application. Nessus had a rich features and scanning capabilities due
to depending on robust scanning engine and additional plugins that provides
extensive data and reports.
At the same time Nessus provides the ability to build and develop
updates on their software for any new vulnerability reported by any
organization, so that it will be covered in the new releases.
Nessus provides different aspects of vulnerability scanning,
such as vulnerabilities related to recommended patches, default passwords or
misconfigurations of them, DDoS vulnerabilities, and unauthorized access to sensitive
data
One last thing to mentioned about Nessus is that this is a
vulnerability scanning tools and not patching or fixing tool, so it can tell
you what is the vulnerability that can be used by hackers and your systems is
exploit to, but then you/system administrator have to do the required actions to
remedy this weakness.
Nessus has both free and paid options.
Nagios
Nagios is a program that can monitor network services as HTTP,
ICMP, POP3, and SMTP. It can monitors hosts and networks in addition to
providing notifications and alerts.
While all consider Nagios a traffic
monitoring tool, but it really can be considered and network security tools
that can help network administrators to have insight of their networks. You can check this article for more info about monitoring tools
Nagios is a program that can monitor network services as HTTP,
ICMP, POP3, and SMTP. It can monitors hosts and networks in addition to
providing notifications and alerts.
While all consider Nagios a traffic
monitoring tool, but it really can be considered and network security tools
that can help network administrators to have insight of their networks. You can check this article for more info about monitoring tools
Splunk
Splunk is one of the most user friendly GUI network monitoring
tool, it is used for real-time and historical data analysis.
There are two options available, Free
version with limited features, and paid one with all modules and features
available. It is very good in searching functions for big data and loggings.
Splunk is a recommended software for system administrators who care about
security portion of their networks and have a budget to invest in for this
purpose.
Splunk is one of the most user friendly GUI network monitoring
tool, it is used for real-time and historical data analysis.
There are two options available, Free
version with limited features, and paid one with all modules and features
available. It is very good in searching functions for big data and loggings.
Splunk is a recommended software for system administrators who care about
security portion of their networks and have a budget to invest in for this
purpose.
NMap
Administrators want to know the weak points of their networks
using a cost effective monitoring tool. NMap is designed to provide a deep look
at the network in terms of hosts, services running on the hosts, and types of
packets being traversed within the network, in addition to many other features, so it is important network security tool.
It also includes and provides
debugging capabilities for all important platforms, in addition to the ability
to perform scanning for one of multiple network at once. It is user friendly
and there is possibility to be customized easily.
Wireshark
Wireshark is an open-source tool and
free which is used to analyze network packets and troubleshooting in addition
to understand the communications of the protocols running within the network.
It allows network administrators to
have deep look at the network in order to understand the nature of packets and
provide packet analysis for different networks like enterprises, educational
institutes or governments. Network admins use it to troubleshoot problems and
to examine security problems within their networks, while developers use it to
debug protocols implementations.
Snort
Snort is an intrusion detection and
prevention system, that is open source and free one. It was developed by Cisco
in 2013. Snort is using network-based traffic analysis and packet logging on
Internet Protocol (IP). Snort also support performing protocol analysis,
content searching and matching. It also has the capabilities to detect
different types of attacks, like buffer overflows, semantic URL attacks,
servers message block probes and stealth port scan.
Snort support working in 3 modes:
-
Sniffer: read network packets
and display on the console
-
Packet logger: logs the packets
to a disk
-
Network intrusion detection monitor
network traffic and analyze it against set of security rules defined by the
admin, then it can perform specific actions based on what is noticed
Gophish
Gophish is a tool dedicated to detect
and test the phishing on organizations network, this is a free and open-source network
security tool.
Gophish support working on different
platforms, including Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. It works on continuous updates which allow it
to track the emails sent, links within the emails, link clicks, credentials
provided and much more. Gophish has a user friendly GUI with rich features that
allow the admins to track the emails and websites. Based on latest statistics
reports around 40% of untrained users fail phishing tests. This proves that it
is not important to have such security tools to prevent phishing, but also
indicates the need to have the employees fully aware about such vulnerabilities
and to avoid breaching this security hole.
pfSense
pfSense is actually installed on
physical computer or virtual machine and can act as firewall /router for the
network. It is an open-source software built based on FreeBSD.
Many companies using pfSense because
it provides flexibility of the firewall features, such as Anti spoofing, Geo IP
blocking, dynamic DNS, pre-set rule profiles, and more
We recommend pfSense firewalls for
small to medium sized businesses who have the time and space to dedicate to
managing an open-source firewall like pfSense.
At the end it is important to say that as long as you have
the knowledge of security concept and you have the ability to search in
addition to keep testing, then these network security tools can help you
understand the vulnerabilities and points where your network is exposed, so
that you can remedy these weaknesses and enhance the security of your network. On
the other hand it is important to transfer the sense of security to the and
awareness to the users/employees of the network to be as the first line of
defense for your network.
Administrators want to know the weak points of their networks
using a cost effective monitoring tool. NMap is designed to provide a deep look
at the network in terms of hosts, services running on the hosts, and types of
packets being traversed within the network, in addition to many other features, so it is important network security tool.
It also includes and provides
debugging capabilities for all important platforms, in addition to the ability
to perform scanning for one of multiple network at once. It is user friendly
and there is possibility to be customized easily.
Wireshark
Wireshark is an open-source tool and
free which is used to analyze network packets and troubleshooting in addition
to understand the communications of the protocols running within the network.
It allows network administrators to
have deep look at the network in order to understand the nature of packets and
provide packet analysis for different networks like enterprises, educational
institutes or governments. Network admins use it to troubleshoot problems and
to examine security problems within their networks, while developers use it to
debug protocols implementations.
Snort
Snort is an intrusion detection and
prevention system, that is open source and free one. It was developed by Cisco
in 2013. Snort is using network-based traffic analysis and packet logging on
Internet Protocol (IP). Snort also support performing protocol analysis,
content searching and matching. It also has the capabilities to detect
different types of attacks, like buffer overflows, semantic URL attacks,
servers message block probes and stealth port scan.
Snort support working in 3 modes:
-
Sniffer: read network packets
and display on the console
-
Packet logger: logs the packets
to a disk
-
Network intrusion detection monitor
network traffic and analyze it against set of security rules defined by the
admin, then it can perform specific actions based on what is noticed
Gophish
Gophish is a tool dedicated to detect
and test the phishing on organizations network, this is a free and open-source network
security tool.
Gophish support working on different
platforms, including Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. It works on continuous updates which allow it
to track the emails sent, links within the emails, link clicks, credentials
provided and much more. Gophish has a user friendly GUI with rich features that
allow the admins to track the emails and websites. Based on latest statistics
reports around 40% of untrained users fail phishing tests. This proves that it
is not important to have such security tools to prevent phishing, but also
indicates the need to have the employees fully aware about such vulnerabilities
and to avoid breaching this security hole.
pfSense
pfSense is actually installed on
physical computer or virtual machine and can act as firewall /router for the
network. It is an open-source software built based on FreeBSD.
Many companies using pfSense because
it provides flexibility of the firewall features, such as Anti spoofing, Geo IP
blocking, dynamic DNS, pre-set rule profiles, and more
We recommend pfSense firewalls for
small to medium sized businesses who have the time and space to dedicate to
managing an open-source firewall like pfSense.
At the end it is important to say that as long as you have the knowledge of security concept and you have the ability to search in addition to keep testing, then these network security tools can help you understand the vulnerabilities and points where your network is exposed, so that you can remedy these weaknesses and enhance the security of your network. On the other hand it is important to transfer the sense of security to the and awareness to the users/employees of the network to be as the first line of defense for your network.
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