Security in the work place begins and ends with the strength of your network security. One successful attack can lead to information leaks, malware infections and can practically bring your company's daily activity to a screeching hault. Check out these 12 free tools from SearchWindowsSecurity.com to prevent these attacks from crippling your network.
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Look@LAN Network Monitor |
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Look@LAN Network Monitor is an advanced network monitor, that automatically detects and analyzes your network nodes, including operating system. The program can monitor the nodes and alert you of any changes (new nodes, offline nodes etc.). The main window lists all available nodes and detailed statistics and scan results are available for each individual machine, including a real-time traceroute report, ping results, active services (open ports) and more. In addition to the auto-detected nodes, you can also customize the scan ranges and add additional networks. Additional features include (but are not limited to):
 Download Look@LAN Network Monitor
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| Snort - Intrusion Detection |
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Snort® is an open source network intrusion prevention and detection system utilizing a rules-driven language which combines the benefits of signature, protocol and anomaly based inspection methods. With millions of downloads to date, Snort is the most widely deployed intrusion detection and prevention technology worldwide and has become the de facto standard for the industry. Download Snort here
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| Ethereal |
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Ethereal is used by network professionals around the world for troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and education. It has all of the standard features you would expect in a protocol analyzer, and several features not seen in any other product. Its open source license allows talented experts in the networking community to add enhancements. It runs on all popular computing platforms, including Unix, Linux, and Windows. Download Ethereal
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| SoftPerfect Network Scanner |
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SoftPerfect Network Scanner is a free multi-threaded IP, NetBIOS and SNMP scanner with a modern interface and several advanced features. It is intended for both system administrators and users who are interested in computer security. The program pings computers, scans for listening TCP ports and shows what types of resources are shared on a network (including system and hidden). p>In addition, it allows you to mount shared resources as network drives, browse them using Windows Explorer, filter the results list and more. SoftPerfect Network Scanner can also check for a user-defined port and report if it is found open, resolve host names and auto-detect your local IP range. Main features include:
Download SoftPerfect Network Scanner
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| Engage Packet Builder |
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Packet injection starting from link layer (MAC address spoofing), supporting TCP. UDP and ICMP protocols Download Engage Packet Builder
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| Sysmon |
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Network monitoring tool designed to provide high performance and accurate network monitoring. Currently supported protocols include SMTP, IMAP, HTTP, TCP, UDP, NNTP, and PING tests. Download Sysmon
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| LanSpy 2.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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You can use LanSpy to find out who works on a remote computer, what kind of OS is installed or learn almost anything else about a remote computer in just a few seconds.
LanSpy is made for gathering the following information about a remote computer: Download LanSpy 2.0
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| SuperScan v4.0 |
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SuperScan 4 is an update of the Windows port scanning tool, SuperScan. New features in this version include:
Download SuperScan v4.0
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| Netcat |
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Netcat is a featured networking utility which reads and writes data across network connections, using the TCP/IP protocol. It is designed to be a reliable "back-end" tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. At the same time, it is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need and has several interesting built-in capabilities. It provides access to the following main features:
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| Nmap |
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Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, although it works against single hosts. Nmap uses raw IP packets to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filter and /firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. Nmap runs on most types of computers and both console and graphical versions are available. Nmap is free software, available with full source code under the terms of the GNU GPL. Download Nmap
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| TCPView 2.34 |
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TCPView is a Windows program that will show you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections. On Windows NT, 2000 and XP TCPView also reports the name of the process that owns the endpoint. TCPView provides a more informative and conveniently presented subset of the Netstat program that ships with Windows. The TCPView download includes Tcpvcon, a command-line version with the same functionality. Download TCPView 2.34
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| NetStumbler |
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NetStumbler is a tool for Windows that allows you to detect Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) using 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g. It has many uses:
NetStumbler
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Related information from SearchWindowsSecurity.com:
- Troubleshooting your Windows-based VPN
- Securing the internal Windows network
- Troubleshooting a Windows-based network
- Step-by-step guide: Network Access Quarantine Control
This guide originally appeared on SearchWindowsSecurity.com.
This was first published in June 2006