Internet Usage Tracking and Reporting 1

[beholder95]

Is there a way to get tracking and/or reporting for what websites users go to and how long they are on them?
I'm not sure if the content filterins subscription would do this or if another piece of hardware would be required.

Any help would be great . thanks

 

[SonicWALLInstructor]

Hi Andy,

Viewpoint from SonicWall will be your best bet. What this will enable you to do is summarize reports\logs from all SonicWall Firewalls into nice, color, readable charts to show your boss and the Executives in your company. It also always you to send reports based on only what is important to the executive asking.

Go to this link for a demo:

http://www.sonicwall.com/products/viewpoint.html

Sonicwall also has excellent training hands on classes that covers every aspect of the Sonicwall products, OS, and Services. Go to this link to check it out:

http://www.sonicwall.com/support/instructor_led.html

I am not a saleman but I do see that you are doing some real important and mission critical stuff and doing it on the fly sometimes takes more time then learning it right from an expert. Training can a 8-10 hour setup to a 1 hour setup. Also the training will also help you find solutions for some of the complex network and security issues you might have.



Roger White CISSP, CISA, CISM, GSEC
Certified SonicWALL Instructor
Network Security Team
Invenio Technology
(212)244-4994 ext. 715
(917)326-0386
Need Help call anytime.

 

[beholder95]

That looks like it'll do the trick. Do you know if viewpoint needs to be licensed on every sonicwall device? Is this a one time license or a subscription?

Thanks for all of your helpful replies.
- Andy

 

[SonicWALLInstructor]

Good Question Andy, where are you located?? I am going to Lunch I can pass by the Inside SonicWALL Sales Rep that covers your region and he can call you and give you all the promotions. You can call me and give me your number and location if you don't want to post it here.

Also Andy if my post was helpful, please grade it so when my coworkers at SonicWALL can judge how helpful I am at the site they might join in.

Roger White CISSP, CISA, CISM, GSEC
Certified SonicWALL Instructor
Network Security Team
Invenio Technology
(212)244-4994 ext. 715
(917)326-0386
Need Help call anytime.

 

[beholder95]

I apprecaite the offer but I usually purchase my sonicwall stuff from a vendor i have a relationship with. Since right now i only have the Pro2040 in use as the VPN is ran via MPLS i'll test it out. If when i setup the VPN with sonicwalls i find i'm not getting reports on the 3 branch offices i'll have to purcahse it for them at that time.

SO we'll use the old "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" strategy.

I appreciate your help (and did rate you as valuable).

Thanks,
Andy

 

[SonicWALLInstructor]

Thanks Andy, Keep in touch. And you got me wrong I was going to give your number to SonicWALL itself, not to sale you but to help you in buying Viewpoint so you don't under buy or over buy.

Roger White CISSP, CISA, CISM, GSEC
Certified SonicWALL Instructor
Network Security Team
Invenio Technology
(212)244-4994 ext. 715
(917)326-0386
Need Help call anytime.

 

[twwabw]

If you need true logging capabilities, you'll find Viewpoint to be pretty limited. While it comes with what appears to be a full set of pre-canned reports, you'll find web site reporting limited in scope. Ten top users, top sites, and only a limited time frame that it collects and retains data. I found it to be just enough to pique your curiosity about a user, but then not enough info to prove it.

If you need true syslog capabilities, you'd be better served by looking at a true syslog application.

 

[beholder95]

Thanks for that info. Can you (or anyone else) make a suggestion as to an appliance that would do the trick?

Thanks,
Andy

 

[twwabw]

The SonicWalls are more than capable of connecting to, and exporting data to a syslog server/application. ViewPoint is in effect a syslog application. There are lots and lots of applications out there for running a syslog server, many on Linux. There are also Windows based apps as well. As a general rule, this will need to be a dedicated box, as there will be LOTS of traffic to it, and this is the only function you'll want to be running on it. Even ViewPoint is pretty resource intensive, and slows the machine to a crawl if you try to do anything else on it. Last place I ran ViewPoint was connected to a Pro-VX, and I ran Viewpoint on a PIII Xeon server, 512Ram. It was very adequate for the app, but there wasn't much else left.

 

[beholder95]

What would be a good application? I got Kiwi Damon getting the logging info and got a trial of Sawmill to compile the data into useful information (reports and such) but it's not very user friendly and won't give me all the info I'm looking for:

Bring up a User's Computer (So IP resolves via WINS)
See their website traffic, bandwidth usage...etc

Bring up a list of all sites accessed (sorted various ways)
be able to see all compters (names via WINS again) that went to that site, when, and how much info was transfered (in kbytes).

Any ideas? I've searched the internet high and low and haven't come up with really anything...


Thanks!
- Andy