General information
The IV Admin module is a management tool for monitoring, administering and controlling the InVircible protection suite throughout the network, in the enterprise and in the small business environment.
IV Admin provides an overall and real time view of InVircible's status and activity on the client's machine, in a local network and over the WAN. IV Admin uses its own built in protocol, which makes it independent of the protocol(s) used for networking. The only requirement for IV Admin to function is access from clients to a common share, used by IV Admin.
IV Admin can run simultaneously on several computers, independently, allowing each member of the administrative group to monitor and control the entire clients' group from his console / workstation.
In its command mode, IV Admin empowers an administrator to order predetermined actions in response to known attack scenarios, as well as gather information on new threats and command the self protection activity, based on informed decisions.
Installation
The IV Admin program is contained in the standard IV setup package. Yet IV Admin will install only if the IV setup mode selected is either 'server', or 'custom', but with 'install network tools' enabled. Either methods will invoke the IV Admin setup wizard.
Initialization
IV Admin uses a couple of shared directories for its operation. The directories are created by default under the IV distribution directory, on the server, and receive mandatory share names that end with _LOG$ and _CMD$. In _LOG$ share, IV Admin stores the unified reports of data collected from the clients, and in the _CMD$ share, IV Admin puts the commands issued by IV Admin. These commands are picked by the clients, and executed locally on the client machine.
The IV Admin shares are created automatically by the IV setup wizard, when installing to an NT servers (W2K is NT, for that matter), and the login scipt is created (or modified) accordingly. In an NT network, the login script serves to inform the client of the IV Admin shares, by writing that data to the client's registry.
To initialize IV Admin, after having installed it to the server, log in at a workstation as administrator, and invoke Ivadmin.exe from either the local drive or the server. Users should start appearing in IV Admin as they log in after the script has been updated.
Configuration of the IV Admin server
As explained, IV Admin uses shares for its operation. The configuration of the server to run IV Admin differs with the type of server.
NT server (including W2K server):
The shares required for IV Admin are automatically created by the IV setup program, Ivwinst.exe. The setup wizard must be run on the server, locally, in 'server' installation mode. When prompted by the wizard for the 'main share', then specify the path of the source from which IV is deployed to workstations, typically \server_nameIVSRC. The setup wizard will then create the 'cmd$' and 'log$' shares on the server, under the IV main share, and automatically set the permissions of these shares. The log$ share is set as 'read-write' to all users, and the cmd$ share as read-only to all.
To complete the installation, the wizard will next check the system login script (batch) and edit it if necessary. Finally, the users profile INI files in the IVSRC directory will be edited to register the IV Admin shares in the clients' registry, through running the login script. The shares info is edited into the INI profile(s), by adding them to the [Install] section. The following is a typical section of such INI file, after it was edited:
[Install]
… (existing stuff) …
InstShare=SL\MyServerIVSRC
LogShare=SL\MyServerIVSRC_LOG$
PollShare=SL\MyServerIVSRC_CMD$
The shares will be deployed to the workstations and written to the registry, as they connect to the network and run the login script.
Novell and other than NT networks:
The deployment of IV Admin in other than NT networks is basically the same as described above, yet manual intervention will be required to setup the distribution.
First, create the two shares manually. It's recommended that the log$ and cmd$ shares be created under the IV distribution directory, normally SysLoginIV. Give the new directories the names _LOG$ and _CMD$. The name of the latter share, _cmd$, is mandatory! Files in the _cmd$ share should be read-only and shareable (ros) to 'everyone', and full permissions should be granted to administrator only. In the _log$ share, give full permissions to everyone (read, write, execute, scan, modify, rename, and delete). With older Netware versions (ver 3.12 and older), you will need to use the GRANT and FILER applications to navigate through the Novell file system and set share attributes (GRANT is similar to the DOS ATTRIB command, under Netware). The two applications can be found in the Netware 'Public' directory.
As in NT networks, the registration of the IV Admin shares on the workstation is done through the login script, from definitions stored in the INI file. Therefore, edit the user profile INI file to contain the following commands, under the [Install] section:
InstShare=SL\sysloginiv
LogShare=SL\sysloginiv\_LOG$
PollShare=SL\sysloginiv\_CMD$
A typical [Install] section will look like this:
[Install]
… (existing stuff) …
InstShare=SL\MyServersysloginiv
LogShare=SL\MyServersysloginiv\_LOG$
PollShare=SL\MyServersysloginiv\_CMD$
You are all set now to deploy IV Admin to your workstations, as they log to the server. |