Monitor Event LogsSeveral of the tools described in this chapter poll events logs and report errors. A more comprehensive plan for event log monitoring is required to spot security incidents and determine what happened during them. MOM is a product that uses event log data, and many third-party products can be used to centrally collect and even manage events. A new tool is planned as part of an update to Windows Server 2003 that will automatically centralize and analyze event log information.Meanwhile, two helpful tools, EventcombMT and lockoutstatus, can span servers to collect and help analyze events. Use EventCombMTEventCombMT can be downloaded from Microsoft.To run the tool, follow these steps:
Use LockoutstatusAnother tool, the Resource Kit tool lockoutstatus.exe, can help you troubleshoot account lockout issues. One of the benefits of setting the account lockout policy is that password-cracking attacks will lock out the account. In order to diagnose whether a lockout is due to an attack or user malfunction, and to determine which computer was used in the attack, you must review data from every domain controller in the domain. In a large domain, this can be time-consuming. The Lockoutstatus.exe tool can be used to display lockout information from all DCs in the domain. To display lockout information on the fredp account in the chicago.local domain, use this command at the command line: Alternatively the fredp@chicago.local account format is acceptable input for the /u: parameter. A GUI displays the results, as shown in Figure 19-34. Right-clicking a DC allows you to view its event log from which you can view logon events and determine the client the user used. The tool can also be used to list account status such as max password age and current age. Figure 19-34. Use lockoutstatus.exe to help determine why the even occurred.[View full size image] ![]() |