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Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes with Tripwire Enterprise 7: Page 2 of 5

Don't Fear Change

Tripwire monitors four device categories: Network nodes include routers, switches, firewalls or load balancers. File server devices represent servers and desktops running Windows, Unix or Linux. Directory server nodes represent LDAP or directory servers such as Microsoft Active Directory. A database device represents a single Oracle or MS SQL installation on a database server.

File server nodes require Tripwire's Enterprise Agent; other categories are scanned remotely. Some organizations won't be thrilled about running another agent on their applications—our own test server already had several running. That said, it's a relatively quiet piece of software, communicating with the Enterprise Server only if it detects a change.

Once your systems are monitored, you specify one or more rules that identify the monitored objects to be scanned, and assign a severity level. The severity level is a numeric value that indicates the importance of a detected change. The level assigned will completely depend on your organization. You can classify severity to indicate that something is out of regulatory compliance, or apply it to operational issues such as a missing security patch or poorly configured firewall or router.

On the one hand, this flexibility lets you customize the product to meet your operational concerns. On the other, it requires you to have a clear understanding of how the changes could impact your organization and what, specifically, you want to monitor. This may be daunting in a large environment. While Tripwire provides the tools to manage change severity, you need to determine your own processes and then use Tripwire to implement those policies. Be prepared to invest some time.