Monitoring Software Blade

Overview

The Monitoring Software Blade shows a complete picture of network and security performance, enabling fast responses to changes in traffic patterns or security events.

Managing network and security performance today can be a difficult juggling act. Security teams have to deal with many networks and VPN gateways, large numbers of users with different needs, and a fast-growing array of security threats that can quickly congest networks. The Monitoring Software Blade shows the complete picture of network and security performance, enabling fast responses to changes in traffic patterns or security activities.

The Monitoring Software Blade centrally monitors Check Point and OPSEC devices, presenting a complete picture of changes to gateways, tunnels, remote users, and security activities. This enables administrators to immediately identify changes in network traffic flow patterns that may signify malicious activity.

Key Benefits

• Maintain high network availability
• Improve efficiency of bandwidth use
• Track SLA compliance
• Increase security ROI
• Respond quickly to network and security changes

Features

• Monitoring gateways
• Monitoring network traffic
• Monitoring suspicious activity and alerts
• Monitoring VPN tunnels
• Monitoring remote users
• Cooperative Enforcement monitoring
• Flexible, graphical reporting
• Tight integration with Check Point products

Monitoring gateways
The Monitoring Software Blade provides real-time information on Check Point gateways, OPSEC™ gateways, and network objects in the organization. Custom and predefined queries enable administrators to view in-depth information, such as system data, network activity, policy, and license status, about specific gateways.

Monitoring network traffic
It also delivers a comprehensive view of network usage. The Monitoring Software Blade can generate detailed or summary graphs and charts for analysis of network traffic patterns, audit and estimate costs of network use, identify departments and users that generate the most traffic, and detect and monitor suspicious activity.

Monitoring suspicious activity and alerts
The Monitoring Software Blade integrates Check Point’s suspicious activity monitoring protocol for modifying access privileges upon detection of any suspicious network activity, such as attempts to gain unauthorized access. Alerts can also be automatically sent to administrators for certain predefined system events such as when free disk space is below an acceptable threshold or if a security policy has been changed. These alerts point to potential system security threats and provide information to assist in avoiding, minimizing, or recovering from damage.

Monitoring VPN tunnels
The Monitoring Software Blade enables system administrators to monitor connectivity between gateways. Permanent tunnels can be set up between Check Point gateways where uninterrupted connectivity is critical to the organization’s business. By constantly monitoring the status of VPN tunnels, including inbound and outbound tunnel traffic, the Monitoring blade enables administrators to track normal tunnel function, so that malfunctions and connectivity problems can be quickly accessed and resolved.

Monitoring remote users
The monitoring of remote users offers valuable information for identifying and troubleshooting remote connectivity issues. The Monitoring Software Blade provides comprehensive information on various aspects of remote user traffic such as current open sessions, overlapping sessions, route traffic, and connection time.

Cooperative Enforcement monitoring
The Cooperative Enforcement® monitoring feature utilizes the Endpoint Security server compliance capability to verify connections arriving from internal and remote hosts across the network. The logs generated for authorized and unauthorized hosts can be monitored via the Monitoring Software Blade.

Flexible, graphical reporting
Using custom or predefined queries, administrators can drill down on a specific segment of traffic or specific gateways to isolate factors that may be affecting network performance. Multiple views can be displayed within the same window and viewed side-by-side to enable easy diagnoses of traffic or security problems.

Tight integration with Check Point products
The Monitoring Software Blade is part of Check Point’s SmartCenter™ management solutions, a suite of powerful applications for centrally configuring, managing, and monitoring Check Point perimeter, internal, Web, and endpoint security gateways. This integration results in reduced complexity and lowers total cost of ownership.

Specifications

Support

Threats to the network are constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated. To maintain continuity and productivity, defenses must advance as quickly to deliver the technology and features that protect the business. Check Point Update service protects against emerging threats with critical hot software fixes, service packs, and major software upgrades.

Benefits

• Ensures continuous security with access to critical hot fixes and service packs
• Maximizes ROI and investment with access to major upgrades and enhancements
• Increases security with the latest applications, features, and technologies