Network Scanning Safety

Because many service disruptions occur when inappropriate vulnerability checks are run against systems (for example: CISCO checks against a network printer), we have developed an intelligent check which greatly reduces the potential of Denial-of-Service scenarios by focusing analysis soley on the checks needed for each system.
The IT Aid Europe approach offers comprehensive, safe analysis by automatically customizing scans to each system in the network based on its individual profile of operating system, network services and protocols.

Nonintrusive vs Intrusive Vulnerability Checks

We provide surgical scans that clearly distinguish between intrusive and nonintrusive vulnerability checks and/or intrusive checks that mimic the actual attack.
Checks labeled as nonintrusive are designed to work without any possiblity of service disruption and with minimal impact on the target systems.
Intrusive checks use intensive analysis techniques, such as vulnerability exploitation, that can possibly disrupt a service, but offer increased accuracy.

IT Aid Europe's customers often use intrusive checks for increased accuracy because most network services in today's environment have an automated recovery procedure built in.
For example, Microsof IIS 6.0 will automatically restart if a service is interrupted.
By providing our customers with the ability to select either highly accurate vulnerability checks or less accurate but "safer" checks, we are able to cater to the diverse needs of customers without providing ambiguous "possible threats" or "potential vulnerabilities" that can obscure risk scoring.

Load Balancing

Before any scanning takes place, all IP addresses in the network are sorted into randomized batches allowing scan traffic to be evenly distributed across the target environment rather than focusing on one segment at a time, which can lead to bandwidth saturation and even service disruption.
This way, peak bandwidth consumption can be substantially lower - making it efficient for companies with low bandwidth.
During the course of a scan, normal business operations must continue as usual, with the network devices smoothly accommodating the increase in amount and variety of network traffic.
Without a vulnerability management product that is able to determine when an important gateway connection is becoming excessively busy during the scan, the risk of Denial Of Service attacks increases dramatically.

Our approch allows the administrator to specify a target remote host (like a core router) to be used as a test for connections. If the host becomes unreachable, all scans will be paused, allowing them to be resumed when connectivity is restored.
By recognizing gateway difficulties, network devices will be allowed sufficient time to recover from an unexpected rise in network traffic.

For Further Help and Information

We are able to offer a unique combination of software, services and education to help organisations to protect the most important assets from the most critical threats. Through a strategic approach to security, IT Aid Europe identifies and implements the right balance of technology and processes with the aid of support engineers to manage digital risk and leverage security investments more effectively.

For more information, please contact IT Aid Europe on 01536 747 000; we are available for visits country wide.