MG-SOFT SNMP Master Agent is a secure and transparent replacement for the SNMP Service running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 operating systems.
Secure replacement for the SNMP service on Windows
If you configure MG-SOFTs SNMP Master Agent to respond only to the SNMPv3 protocol queries, ignoring SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c queries, you significantly improve the security of the server or workstation running the SNMP agent.
Advantages
Replacing the Microsofts SNMP service with MG-SOFT SNMP Master agent introduces the following major advantages:
The main advantage of MG-SOFTs SNMP Master Agent over Microsofts SNMP Service is significantly improved overall security of the server or workstation running the SNMP Master Agent.
Microsofts SNMP service supports only insecure SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c protocols, while MG-SOFTs SNMP Master Agent, in addition to SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c protocols, also supports the secure SNMPv3 protocol.
Another important advantage is the ease of the software deployment.
The software installer replaces the existing SNMP service with MG-SOFTs SNMP Master Agent, while all SNMP subagents (SNMP Agent Extensions) remain in place and continue to operate under MG-SOFTs SNMP Master Agent just as they were operating under Microsofts SNMP service. The added value is support for the secure SNMPv3 protocol on the network side.
Significantly improved overall security of the server or workstation
When using the OS-supplied insecure SNMPv1 or SNMPv2c protocols for managing your workstations and servers, malicious visitors can, without taking much effort, remotely reconfigure such computer, which could be quite harmful.
SNMPv3 protocol introduced significant security enhancements over previous SNMP protocol versions. It uses strong authentication methods (MD5 or SHA1 hashing algorithms) and the payload of the SNMP packets can be encrypted (DES or AES128 privacy algorithms). Protocol supports any combination of these authentication and privacy (encryption) algorithms. In other words, the SNMPv3 protocol implements authentication and network packet encryption that prevents unauthorized access described in the previous paragraph.
You can configure MG-SOFTs SNMP Master Agent to respond only to the SNMPv3 protocol queries, ignoring SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c queries. In such way you significantly improve the security of the server or workstation running MG-SOFTs SNMP agent. Strong authentication will prevent unauthorized read and write access to the SNMP agent and encrypted SNMP Packets on the network will hide the contents from malicious visitors who may, by a chance, sniff such packets on the network.
In the SNMP Master Agent Configurator you can enter or change the SNMP Master Agent SNMPv3 security access parameters, so that only remote SNMP managers knowing these parameters will succeed in contacting and managing the SNMP Master Agent running on that particular workstation or server.
Ease of deployment
MG-SOFT SNMP Master Agent is a secure and transparent replacement for Microsofts SNMP Service. Transparent means that no changes whatsoever are required in the existing subagents and in the master agent configuration. To deploy the MG-SOFT SNMP Master Agent, you only need to shutdown Microsofts SNMP Master Agent (service) and start MG-SOFTs SNMP Master Agent. While starting, MG-SOFT SNMP Master Agent reads Microsoft agents configuration parameters from the system registry and loads all listed subagent DLL modules.
At any time you can then reconfigure SNMP security access parameters in MG-SOFTs SNMP Master Agent by using the supplied agent configuration tool.