Windows Security Center Status - OS Test
Windows Security Center (WSC) is a comprehensive reporting tool that helps administrators establish and maintain a protective security layer around Windows VMs to monitor the VM's health state. The Windows Security Center also monitors third party security products such as firewall, antivirus, antimalware and antispyware, installed on the VM. In order for the security products to be compliant with Windows and successfully report status to Action Center, these products should be registered with the security center. The security products communicate any subsequent status changes to the security center using private APIs. The security center, in turn, communicates these updates to Action Center, where they are finally displayed to the end user. With Windows Security Center, administrators can check whether any security product is installed and turned on, and if the definitions of the products are up to date and real-time protection is enabled. By continuously monitoring the Windows Security Center, administrators can instantly find out whether the security products are up-to-date or out dated, and the status of security products in real-time. This is what exactly the Windows Security Center Status - OS test does!
This test auto-discovers the security products installed on the Windsows VMs on the target host, and for each security product reports the current definition status and the current protection status. Using these details, administrators are alerted to the systems on which the automatic updates are outdated and virus protection turned off. By closely monitoring the status, administrators can take necessary actions before the end users become vulnerable to virus threats or malicious attacks.
This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence : Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick Oracle VirtuaBox as the desired Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose the test from the disabled tests list, and click on the < button to move the test to the ENABLED TESTS list. Finally, click the Update button.
Target of the test : An Oracle VirtualBox
Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for every security product:provider combination on each Windows VMs.
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
Test period |
How often should the test be executed |
Host |
The host for which the test is to be configured. |
Port |
The port number at which the specified Host listens to. |
Oracle Hypervisor |
Specify the name of the user who has the right to access the VirtualBox via SSH. |
Oracle Hypervisor Password |
Provide the password of the oracle hypervisor user. |
Confirm Password |
Confirm the password by retyping it here. |
Sudocmd |
This test executes certain privileged VDA (Virtual Desktop Access) commands to pull out the desired metrics from the VirtualBox. To enable the test to run these commands, you first need to install a sudo package on the VirtualBox host. The procedure for installing this package is detailed in Pre-requisites for Auto-Discovering VMs and Obtaining their Outside View. Once the package is installed, you need to specify the full path to the install directory of the sudo package in the Sudocmd text box. |
Ignore VMs Inside |
Administrators of some high security virtualized environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the 'inside view' of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the Ignore VMs Inside View parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of VM names, or VM name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your Ignore VMs Inside View specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all VMs on an Oracle VirtualBox host by default. Note: While performing VM discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the VMs configured in the Ignore VMs Inside View text box. |
Exclude VMs |
Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical VMs - for instance, VM templates - both from 'outside' and from 'inside'. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such VMs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of VMs to be excluded from monitoring in the Exclude VMs text box. Instead of VMs, VM name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your Exclude VMs specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all VMs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of VMs/VM name patterns in the Exclude VMs text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting 'inside' and 'outside' view metrics for a configured set of VMs. |
Ignore WINNT |
By default, the eG agent does not support the inside view for VMs executing on Windows NT operating systems. Accordingly, the Ignore WINNT flag is set to Yes by default. |
Inside View Using |
By default, this test communicates with every VM remotely and extracts “inside view” metrics. Therefore, by default, the Inside View Using flag is set to Remote connection to VM (Windows). Typically, to establish this remote connection with Windows VMs in particular, eG Enterprise requires that the eG agent be configured with domain administrator privileges. In high-security environments, where the IT staff might have reservations about exposing the credentials of their domain administrators, this approach to extracting “inside view” metrics might not be preferred. In such environments therefore, eG Enterprise provides administrators the option to deploy a piece of software called the eG VM Agent (Windows) on every Windows VM; this VM agent allows the eG agent to collect “inside view” metrics from the Windows VMs without domain administrator rights. Refer to Configuring the eG Agent to Obtain the Inside View of Windows VMs, using the eG VM Agent for more details on the eG VM Agent. To ensure that the “inside view” of Windows VMs is obtained using the eG VM Agent, set the Inside View Using flag to eG VM Agent (Windows). Once this is done, you can set the Domain, Admin User and Admin Password parameters to none. |
Domain, |
By default, this test connects to each virtual guest remotely and attempts to collect “inside view” metrics. In order to obtain a remote connection, the test must be configured with user privileges that allow remote communication with the virtual guests. The first step towards this is to specify the Domain within which the virtual guests reside. The admin user and admin password will change according to the Domain specification. Discussed below are the different values that the domain parameter can take, and how they impact the admin user and admin password specifications:
|
Report By User |
While monitoring a VirtualBox, the Report By User flag is set to Yes by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the VirtualBox are identified using the login of the user who is accessing the guest OS. In other words, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename. If this flag is set to No, then the guests will be identified using the host name of the guest OS. In this case, the test will report measures for every virtualmachinename. |
Report Powered OS |
This flag becomes relevant only if the Report By User flag is set to ‘Yes’. If the Report Powered OS flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in currently. Such guests will be identified by their virtualmachine name and not by the username_on_virtualmachinename. On the other hand, if the Report Powered OS flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those VMs to which no users are logged in currently. |
DD Frequency |
Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD frequency. |
Detailed Diagnosis |
To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:
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Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation |
---|---|---|---|
Incoming traffic |
Indicates the rate of incoming traffic. |
Pkts/Sec |
An increase in traffic to the guest can indicate an increase in accesses to the guest (from users or from other applications) or that the guest is under an attack of some form. |
Outgoing traffic |
Represents the rate of outgoing traffic. |
Pkts/Sec |
An increase in traffic from the guest can indicate an increase in accesses to the guest (from users or from other applications). |