Network Alert Software and Monitoring (Meraki) Continued

In this video, we’re talking about alert software and monitoring with Meraki. Now, let’s talk about Meraki. Again, Meraki is an MDM, or a Mobile Device Management, system by Cisco. Meraki works on desktops, laptops, iOS, Android, tablets, et cetera. Meraki allows us to create different rules for these devices. Meraki also supports remote lock, remote wipe, and pushing applications. So if, for example, we have iOS phones or Android phones given out to staff and someone loses one, well, we could remotely lock the device. We could remotely wipe it. So if a thief grabs a hold of that device, we can make sure that it’s not compromised in that way.

We also could do things like go out and take a look at where the device is. We could do a location tracking on it. We could also geofence devices that are in Meraki. So say, for example, we have laptops or other devices that are supposed to stay within the building. Well, we could put a geofence area around our building so the minute one of these devices leaves, it’ll send us an alert and start tracking it. We can also do things like monitoring devices. We can see what’s installed on there for software. We can see what OS version’s on there. We can see if there’s compliance, whether the antivirus is on or off or even installed.

We can see if it’s up to date, for the antivirus. We can make sure things are a certain firmware update and whatnot. It allows for a high degree of configuration. Meraki also ties into other Cisco devices. Again, it ties into their Cisco switches, cameras, phones, and et cetera. So this is a example of a Cisco Meraki dashboard. So this is some of the information that we could actually see. We can see this is a laptop. We could see the model number, serial number. We could see the type of device - this is a Lenovo computer. We could see the CPU type, how much RAM is on there. We could see what the BIOS version is.

We could also see the OS on here. So this is a Windows 10 Pro Education. We can see the OS build. We can see when it was installed on, last boot time, how long the computer was on, the last user that logged into it, antivirus, whether the antivirus is running - yes or no - anti-spyware software. You could see the firewall. Is login required? Is auto login enabled? Screen lock enabled or not, required password after. And this is a geofence area that we have set up here so we could see whether it’s compliant or not. And we can see the management enrollment date. We can even see how much hard drive space is left on that machine.

We can see IP address, the public IP address, the wireless adapter. We can see the Bluetooth, MAC address, and whatnot. So as you see, there is a lot of information that we could pull off of these devices. And of course, the more insight we have with our devices, the better off we’re going to be. So this is the System Manager. So when you go in the System Manager, again, we could have a lot of different options in here. We could set a password expiration enforced on all the devices that are enrolled in Meraki. And we can force the users to change their password every X days.

Use passwords - we reinforce different password policies - strong passwords, account lockout times, idle times, two-factor authentication, login IP range. So if we want the devices only to use a certain IP range, we can specify that. SecureX Sign-On - these are for Cisco-enabled devices. Licencing notification and whatnot. So again, a lot of different options we could set for an organisation setting. So I can create several different organisations and separate the devices out depending on what department they’re in. So let’s take a quick look at Meraki. So this is Cisco Meraki. I’m just going to log in the dashboard. I’m using the free version of Meraki.

So it’s pretty easy. It’s nice cloud-based console. So you enter email, your password. And you can set up a free account. You get a few devices that you can set up. So I put a couple of devices in here. And if we click on the device here, we can, again, see all that information - the name, the model, serial number, again, the network IP address. We can check the online status. We could remotely erase the device. We could send command line commands to it, take screenshots. We could RDP into it. We could change the power control. We can see the wireless signal strength. We could see the SSIDs that are around the area.

And we can see the programs installed on the computer. And we can start looking at the event log - again, event log being very important. And we could see the approximate location that it’s in.

Now, we could also create different networks here. So again, if you have different networks, different devices, we can add different things - wireless APs, cameras, cellular devices. We can configure policies. We could tag things. We could set different owners. Just a lot of different options. And it’s pretty easy to go through. So if we’re setting up a policy, we’d just put a policy name. We can start clicking on what policies we want to set. And for geofencing, we just click on geofencing. We set a name for the geofence, and then we create our geofence. Again, if we’re using Apple devices, we can set the VPP requirements for this. We can start installing devices and add devices. It’s pretty simple.

Either we could download the package or we could send an email out or they can go to a website to set up their device onto our network. So all in all, a pretty easy program to use.

So this was about Cisco Meraki. In the next video, we’re going to talk about IP, what it is, IP addresses, and why they’re important. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.