Firewall analyzer with PRTG

There are different reasons why monitoring & analyzing firewalls is important, for example:

• To identify security vulnerabilities like unauthorized access attempts, malicious traffic, and other potential security risks that could be exploited by criminals.
• To prevent data breaches by identifying and blocking suspicious traffic before it reaches a company's network.
• To ensure compliance with security standards like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which may be essential in your line of business.
• To gain visibility into network traffic patterns, user behavior, and application usage, for example, if users are trying to run servers or services forbidden by corporate policy.
• To optimize network performance by identifying traffic bottlenecks or misconfigured rules that could be impacting network throughput.

There are 5 main features you need to look out for when choosing a firewall analyzer solution. With PRTG, you can have all of them:

• Out-of-the-box compatibility with the main firewall vendors on the market
• The capability to monitor & analyze many different parameters in one tool
• A centralized display of information from many sensors for better observability
• Customizable alerts and automated notifications when alerts are triggered
• Native and automated reporting features for different target audiences

In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive.

On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.