The Network Security Toolkit (NST) is a free suite of open source applications for monitoring and maintaining network security. It comes as an ISO disk image with its own operating system and web user interface. It can be installed on an optical disc, USB flash drive, or a virtual machine. NST offers detailed network analysis, diagnostics, monitoring, and security analysis using its suite of applications. It also provides visualization of network functionality with a geolocation feature.
The Network Security Toolkit (NST) is a suite of free, open source applications for monitoring, analyzing, and maintaining security on a computer network. NST comes standard as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) disk image that contains its complete operating system, the leading open source network security applications used by security professionals, and a Web User Interface (WUI) for working with them. instruments. The disc image can be written to an optical disc, CD Rom or DVD Rom and booted on most 32- and 64-bit computers based on the Intel 8086 (x86) central processing unit (CPU).
As a standalone system, the Network Security Toolkit operating system is based on the Fedora Linux operating system distribution. NST uses many of the software packages included in the standard distribution of Fedora Linux, including the Yellowdog Updater package manager, Modified (YUM), to manage updates to operating system components and software packages for network security applications. While NST can be downloaded, burned to an optical disc, and run as a so-called live distribution, that’s not the only way you can run or install the Network Security Toolkit. Some installation methods offer advantages over others, depending on how you plan to deploy and use NST.
As a live distribution, the Network Security Toolkit can be installed on an optical disc, such as a CD Rom or DVD Rom, or portable Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drive and then booted or loaded into a computer’s random access memory (RAM ). While very portable, the live method cannot retain information such as passwords or other saved data between sessions, and any NST software updates are limited by the amount of RAM available. A permanent version of NST can be set up on a USB flash drive which is portable and will hold the security information collected during the session and which can then be transferred to another computer for analysis. Again, however, even using the persistent USB method, software updates are limited. NST can also be installed in a fixed form, on a computer hard drive, which will provide data persistence and easy updates, but is not transferable.
Another method of implementing the Network Security Toolkit is through a virtual machine, a virtual computer running on an existing hardware computer system. A virtual machine can be configured using a software system such as VMWare and NST can then be configured in live or fixed mode. Both virtual methods carry the same advantages and disadvantages as their real world counterparts, but are further incapable of monitoring wireless networks depending on the hardware in which the virtual environment has been established. The advantage of using a virtual machine to run NST is that it can be configured to monitor not only the host machine’s computer, but also any other virtual machines running on that host, a method called inline tap. Many enterprise server software systems run on virtual machines to better allocate hardware resources, so NST can be used this way to very easily monitor and analyze a wide range of virtual servers.
Whichever method is used to install or run the Network Security Toolkit, many of its features cannot be fully utilized until a root password is provided, at which point many of NST’s services will be started. Once NST is up and running, it can perform detailed network analysis, diagnostics, monitoring, and other security analyzes using its suite of applications. Most of the applications are available through the WUI, where the user can set up a terminal server, monitor serial ports, map computer hosts and services on a network, trace the paths data packets take from one host to another more and more. NST also provides visualization of much of this functionality with a geolocation feature that can pinpoint the physical locations of hosts anywhere in the world and display them on a Mercator World Map image or via Google Earth.
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