Cyberoam Firewall State Test

Cyberoam uses clustering technology to ensure high availability. In a cluster, two Cyberoam firewall appliances are grouped together and instructed to work as a single entity. In the cluster setup, one of the firewall appliances acts as primary whereas the other one acts as secondary. The high availability configuration always ensures that one of the two firewall appliances is available for maintaining the network traffic so that the downtime of the network is reduced considerably. The firewall appliances can be configured in Active/Passive or Active/Active mode.

If the high availability of the firewall is challenged, the environment may become vulnerable to unknown virus attacks and unauthorized access, both of which can put the environment's security at risk. Hence, to make sure that the environment stays protected around the year from network threats, it is necessary to monitor the high availability status of the Cyberoam firewall. This is where the Cyberoam Firewall State test helps administrators!

By continuously monitoring the target firewall, this test reveals whether the firewall is in standalone configuration or high availability configuration. In addition, this test also reports the number of VPN users who are currently accessing the firewall. Analyzing these metrics, administrators can figure out the mode in which the firewall is currently operating and the workload.

Target of the test : A Cyberoam Firewall

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the Cyberoam Firewall being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter Description

Test period

How often should the test be executed.

Host

The IP address of the target host for which this test is to be configured.

SNMPPort

The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB; the default is 161.

SNMPVersion

By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMPVersion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list.

SNMPCommunity

The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the firewall. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the SNMPVersion chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear.

Username

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against this parameter. 

Context

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the Username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the Username in the Context text box.  By default, this parameter is set to none.

AuthPass

Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPversion selected is v3.

Confirm Password

Confirm the AuthPass by retyping it here.

AuthType

This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:

  • MD5 - Message Digest Algorithm
  • SHA - Secure Hash Algorithm
  • SHA224 - Secure Hash Algorithm 224 bit
  • SHA256 - Secure Hash Algorithm 256 bit
  • SHA384 - Secure Hash Algorithm 384 bit
  • SHA512 - Secure Hash Algorithm 512 bit

EncryptFlag

This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. 

EncryptType

If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:

  • DES - Data Encryption Standard
  • 3DES - Triple Data Encryption Standard
  • AES - Advanced Encryption Standard
  • AES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit
  • AES192 - Advanced Encryption Standard 192 bit
  • AES256 - Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit

EncryptPassword

Specify the encryption password here.

Confirm Password

Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here.

Timeout

Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds.

Data Over TCP

By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.

EngineID

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

HA mode

Indicates whether the firewall is configured in standalone mode or high-availability mode, and the mode on which the firewall is configured for high availability.

 

The values that this measure reports and their corresponding numeric values are listed in the table below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Standalone 1
Active-passive 2
Active-active 3

Note:

By default, this measure reports the Measure Values discussed in the table above. However, in the graph of this measure, the high availability status of the firewall is indicated using the numeric equivalents only.

Firewall live users

Indicates the number of users who are currently connected to the firewall.

Number

This measure is a good indicator of the current workload on the firewall.