Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

May 2020

Hardening Your Windows Server in 2020

Security is vital for protecting company assets and data subjects. Evolving data protection regulations, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), have thrown light on security breaches and the security architecture of those compromised. In 2019, the global average cost for a data breach was $3.9 million, not including reputational damage and hidden costs.

Add Event ID and Text Filter to Event Log Monitor

How to Audit Windows Logons and Logon Failures When a user logs into a Windows computer, or fails to logon, an event can be written to the Windows Event Log. This feature is built in to Windows. The Event Log monitor in PA Server Monitor can tell you when one of these events occurs, thus alerting you to a server logon, or a failed server logon. And because the Event Log monitor has a configurable monitoring cycle (the Schedule button in the lower right corner), you can find out about the logon in nearly real time.

How to Monitor Anti-Virus and Alert

Using the Inventory Alerter monitor in PA Server Monitor can help you monitor for changes in your Anti-Virus software. The Inventory Collector collects system information including Anti-Virus product information. Then when using the Inventory Alerter monitor you can alert on such items as when the running status changes, when the Pattern File Date is out of date, or when the Version changes.

How to Monitor if a Process is Running

PA Server Monitor's process monitor checks how many instances of a target specified process are running on Windows or Linux servers. It then compares that to the threshold and fires actions as needed. The process may be running locally, or remotely. PA Server Monitor can monitor remote processes on Windows servers via WMI or SNMP, as well as processes on remote Linux/Unix servers via SNMP. Process up or down data is recorded every time the monitor runs. You can define a time period, and optionally a summarization (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly) to create an uptime report for the process.

How to Monitor Services

Learn how to add a Service Monitor to your monitored server in PA Server Monitor. The Service Monitor watches the same system services that can be seen from the Administrator Tools Services applet (services.msc). If a service is not running, actions are fired (which could notify you and/or restart the service for example). The Restart Service action is typically attached to this monitor.