Recommend alternative to tripwire?

Question

Looking for a host-based IDS comparable to tripwire. Preferably one that allows centralized management. Right now I use tripwire and though it works management and reporting through a central server would be ideal. I'm looking for recommendations that have actually been used and not just google results. Thanks!

Answer 1

We use OSSEC as HIDS and Splunk to analyze the results. OSSEC provides:

• File integrity
• Log monitoring
• Rootkit detection
• Configuration analysis

There is a free Splunk App, called Splunk for OSSEC which works great to manage OSSEC alerts (there are dashboards, queries, etc.). We use free Splunk.

You can also use the OSSEC WebUI, but it is much more limited.

To give you an idea of how it is, have a look at this screenshot.

Answer 2

OSSec provides an IDS similar to Tripwire, amongst other host monitoring. It's centrally managed, with all the logs arriving into a single collector. If you've got a server to spare then you could also use OSSim which provides IDS as well as network monitoring and penetration testing tools.

Answer 3

If you are using Windows systems, a good alternative to Tripwire is Verisys. Like Tripwire it does file integrity monitoring and has a central administration console for reporting etc, but it's a whole lot easier to use than Tripwire. And cheaper :)

It's Windows only though, so not much use if you are using Linux...

Answer 4

Give a try to Prelude (http://www.prelude-technologies.com/en/development/community/index.html). I wanted to test it too, it seems much better than normal HIDS.

Answer 5

A good alternative to Tripwire that I stumbled across is CimTrak. They work across a wide variety or platforms, Windows, Linux, UNIX, etcl. It has centralized management and reporting. We looked at Tripwire but the price was atrocious. I've used it before and also find it next to impossible to configure. CimTrak has worked great for us. Just as good if not better than Tripwire.