Owning and managing a dedicated server is a challenging task and not to mention a costly one. There are a lot of paid network monitor & security applications out there that can keep your server safe. However, if you want to save some cost while getting the job done, you can consider these free tools that we have compiled for you.
Here are the list of free network monitor & security for dedicated server:
- Monit
- Argus
- Observium
- Snort
- Zeek
- Nikto2
The first on our list is Monit, a small Open Source utility for managing and monitoring Unix systems. It not only monitors your server, but also attempts to remedy problems by taking predefined actions for certain situations. Example, if your Apache server stops running for some reason, you can preset Monit to tell which service to restart and Monit will do it for you.
Monit is able to monitor a wide range of server systems, processes, host, files, directories, disks. There’s also an iPhone app available to help you conveniently check on your network without carrying around a laptop.
An open source system and network monitoring software, Argus has a clean and intuitive web interface that is easy to understand. It has an alert escalation procedure, after sending out an alert and if the problem still isn’t resolved within a fixed amount of time, another alert will be sent out to someone else. It can also support redundant multi-server configurations.
In our opinion, Observium is better built in terms of user interface, maybe due to their network monitoring software having both open source and paid version. Observium is geared towards Linux, BSD and Cisco networks, Windows, Juniper operating systems. It supports integration with a number of third party applications and the ability to write your own custom application modules to collect and report data from your applications. Supplied application collectors include Apache, BIND, DRBD, Memcached, MySQL, NFS.
An enterprise-grade open-source IDS is compatible with any OS and hardware. Snort Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) uses a series of rules that help define malicious network activity and uses those rules to find packets that match against them and generates alerts for users. The system performs protocol analysis, content searching/matching, and detection of various network security attacks.
Although it is an open source program, they do have options for a paid ruleset (Snort subscribers ruleset) and free ruleset (community ruleset). The paid rulesets are developed, tested, and approved by Cisco Talos. While the free rulesets are from the Snort community and QAed by Cisco Talos.
Zeek is an open source software platform that provides compact, high-fidelity transaction logs, file content, and fully customized output to analysts, fastest research and commercial networks. Zeek is not an active security device, like a firewall or intrusion prevention system. Rather, this tool decodes protocols and looks for anomalies within the traffic.
With its network optimized programming language, vibrant open source community, and global footprint, Zeek is able to provide the data and insights needed to tackle today’s toughest network challenges.
A web server testing tool that is able find known vulnerable scripts, configuration mistakes and related security problems. Nikto is not designed as a stealthy tool. It will test a web server in the quickest time possible, and is obvious in log files or to an IPS/IDS.
One of the great features that we like is the false positive reduction via multiple methods: headers, page content, and content hashing.
As you may already know, open source softwares and free softwares usually provide limited features or they are able to solve one problem only. When you are on a budget, or believe in the power of community contribution, then you should give this list of network and security tools a try. We hope that you find this resourceful.
