February 27, 2005
Nsauditor: Network Security Auditing on the Cheap
Conducting a network security audit isn't very easy the first time you do it. You've got to either purchase a commercial audit package and learn how it works or assemble your own adhoc toolkit from open source offerings. Either way, you're looking at hours of effort to get even a quick look at the security condition of your network.
Now you can conduct an initial audit in just minutes, with a total cash investment of only $37, thanks to Nsasoft's Nsauditor.
Nsauditor is a suite of 34 ready-to-run security scanners that will probe your network for common vulnerabilities and give you a quick heads up of any glaring exposures. It includes probes for MS and Sun RPC ports, MSSQL Server, NetBIOS, SNMP, SMTP, Web proxy, CGI, and LM/NTLM password vulnerabilities. It also includes a reasonably capable Security Events monitor, an IP ARP watcher, a routing monitor, a local connection analyzer, and a bevy of tools for performing various common network assessment tasks, such as validating DNS servers, verifying routing, and capturing and decoding Ethernet packets.
A built-in discovery scanner detects all live hosts on your network and executes more detailed scans on each automatically. A report generator creates XML-formatted reports detailing the results of each audit run.
Is this as complete a tool as heavy-weight vulnerability assesment packages sold by the likes of eEye, Foundstone, and ReddShell? No, but it's definitely way more than $37 worth of securityware. The package is a little rough around the edges, and documentation could be more complete, but any network professional with basic mouse-clicking skills can drive this program through its paces. If you're new to VA, this tool will let you get some basic hands-on experience at low cost. If you're an experienced network security auditor, Nsauditor can still give you a quick initial assemement to help you see where to best concentrate more detailed analysis.
Posted by Mel Beckman at February 27, 2005 7:51 PM
