S 4.132 Monitoring the Lotus Notes/Domino environment

Initiation responsibility: IT Security Officer, Head of IT

Implementation responsibility: Administrator

Suitably monitoring the Lotus Notes/Domino environment is necessary in order to be able to image the defined protection requirements during operation. Monitoring contributes to the detection of malfunctions or attacks.

Depending on the defined protection requirements of the Lotus Notes/Domino environment, suitable monitoring must be implemented that must be documented accordingly (e.g. in the operational concept mentioned in S 4.128 Secure operation of the Lotus Notes/Domino environment).

The Lotus Notes/Domino environment can be monitored by using external monitoring tools checking for parameters and processes relevant for the network, the operating system, and partially also the application level. Normally, deep integration of the monitoring tool and the application to be monitored is possible if tools of the same manufacturer (in this case the Tivoli product family) are used.

Security components such as security gateways, IDS systems, content security appliances, and similar can also contribute to monitoring. This requires corresponding collaboration between the persons responsible for the security components and the persons responsible for operating the Lotus Notes/Domino environment.

The Lotus Notes/Domino platform offers a host of monitoring functions both on domain level (Domino Domain Monitoring) and on server level (Domino Server Monitoring and Server Health Monitoring, imaged by the integration of basic functions of the IBM Tivoli Analyzer). Amongst other things, monitoring is possible using the server console, the administrator console, and the Domino Server Monitor. Furthermore, the platform offers extensive monitoring functions intended for supporting the Performance-Tuning, e.g. the Domino Configuration Collector.

The Fault Recovery function provides mechanisms supporting automatic recovery and restart in the event of an error. Using this function requires comprehensive conceptional preparatory work and careful parameterisation.

Review questions:

• Is the operation of the Lotus Notes/Domino environment monitored by means of suitable monitoring mechanisms or tools?
• Is there documentation on the parameterisation of the monitoring mechanisms?