Many hotels with audit gateway alarm functions are deployed only by default. Default warnings often result in either too loose thresholds leading to no warning or too sensitive a warning spread, and the operators receive an extravagant amount of alerts every day, and for long periods ignore all warnings.
The principle of warning classification
Not all anomalies need to be addressed immediately, nor do all abnormalities have to wait until the next day. Warning levels are a first step in designing warning strategies. The recommendation is divided into three tiers: P0 for failures affecting audit functions themselves, such as equipment crashes, storage cases and audit process stops, which require immediate response; P1 for irregularities that affect audit quality but do not affect audit function, such as identity chain interruptions, NTP clock deviations above thresholds, increased log writing delays, etc., which are handled within 4 hours; P2 is a message that needs attention but not urgent, such as peak traffic near capacity ceilings, occasional load loads of equipment, etc., which can be incorporated into the weekly routine check list. The aim of this classification is to give operators an idea of what they need to put down their complaints and what can be dealt with during regular working hours.
Threshold setting for traffic alarms
The traffic anomaly alert is one of the most valuable warnings in the audit gateway, but thresholds are either omitted or misreported if not justified. The type of traffic anomaly can include: a single IP generating large amounts of connection (possibly equipment poisoning or P2P application), unusual traffic during off-time, specific known malicious domain names or IP access behaviour. The threshold setting needs to be adjusted based on baseline data from daily hotel traffic and cannot be set up without an arbitrary value. It is recommended that the auditing system run for a period of one or two weeks to collect flow baseline data.——Average bandwidth, average number of co-match connections and ceiling thresholds for individual devices over different working days/ weekends——The warning thresholds are then set based on these actual data rather than the default values of the manufacturer.
Monitor dimensions of the device 's own state
A lot of audit gateways are only concerned."Is the flow abnormal?"But I'm missing it."Whether the device itself is normal"The following categories of state must be included in the monitoring and warning: CPU use continues to exceed 80% by more than 10 minutes (states that load is too high); memory usage exceeds 85% (possibly imminent OOM); disk usage exceeds 80% (restricted processing time); system temperature exceeds safe working space (hardware heat spread may have been a problem); system process abnormally exited. These indicators are early signs of equipment health, and if the equipment is not reached, audit records are lost at the mid-point.
Log Integrity Alert
The integrity of the audit log is a core requirement for compliance. A warning strategy should include checks on log integrity in several dimensions: whether the log write rate is normal (if it suddenly decreases from normal to near zero, there may be problems with the log write process); whether there are errors in log writing failures (every failure should trigger an alarm); whether automatic coverage has occurred in log storage (P0 alerts should be triggered if they occur because this means that compliance retention requirements have been compromised); and whether log completeness verification has failed records (if log tampering is turned on). These warnings are not triggered in the absence of daily anomalies, but once they are triggered, it means that audit records may themselves be incomplete.
Reasonable choice of channel for warning
The alarms are configured to ensure that they are visible. Different types of alarms should be matched with different channels of notification: P0-level alerts are passed through text messages or instant communication tools to duty personnel, ensuring that they are received at or without the job; P1-level alerts can be sent via mail or internal feed platforms and are accessible during working hours; P2-level alarms do not require separate notification, but are compiled in weekly reports.
Closed loop management for alarm processing
The alarm is not a matter of ending. Every triggered warning should record the process: when it's received, who handled it, what was done, how it was resolved and whether there are residual effects that need to be followed up. The meaning of this closed record is that, first, it can go back to history to see if it is an old problem recurring; secondly, it can assess the efficiency with which the carrier handles different types of warnings; and thirdly, it can optimize warning thresholds and strategies by using historical records.——If a warning is triggered weekly but is misreported each time, this indicates that the threshold level needs to be adjusted.
The alternate optimization of the alarm strategy
The warning strategy is not always configured at once. After the audit system has been in operation, it should be re-examined and adjusted according to actual data: do there are rules for frequent misreporting that require adjustment of thresholds? Are there any actual problems but no areas for alarm? Have some warnings been permanently untried, but the corresponding rules have been meaningless? It is recommended that a comprehensive review of the warning strategy be done quarterly, adjusting and optimizing the alert rules based on the warning data and actual security records over the last three months.
The effect of a good warning strategy is that there are few warnings, but every warning deserves serious attention.