Remote Desktop Security

5 Key Synthetic Login Monitoring Features Available In Remote Desktop Canary v2.0+

March 4, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

We get so much great feedback from our customers, and as any software solution matures, it’s easy to lose track of the details of features and the reasons customers need them.

In the case of our Remote Desktop Canary, some key features in v2.0+ have made it the synthetic login monitoring workhorse that it is. So, here’s a look at 5 key features that were first introduced with version 2.0:

1. Use OCR Event Detection To Alert To Error Conditions And Slow Application Load Times During Synthetic RDS Logins

Based on our customers’ wonderful feedback, we engineered an OCR event detection engine that scans screenshots during and after the RDP login sequence.

So besides that just being cool itself, what does it really do for you? This engine allows you to define and receive alerts when certain error messages appear on screen. This way, you can define and receive alerts if it takes too long for a program to start in a RDP session – due to profile problems, for instance.

Receive OCR Based Alerts Related To On Screen Errors and Application Startup Times — Version 2.0+ of Remote Desktop Canary offers a full OCR engine that can alert based on on-screen error conditions OR slow application startup times.

2. RDP Connectivity Testing On Multiple Computers at Once

Remote Desktop Canary offers a “multi-server testing workflow,” whereby it will quickly check RDP responsiveness on a group of servers in Active Directory, or the servers participating in a RDS collection.

Test RDP Connectivity on Multiple Servers At Once — Remote Desktop Canary can perform a routine RDP connectivity check on multiple servers at once.

3. Bypass Windows Server Login Notification Banners

If your organization uses login notification banners to provide an acceptable use policy (AUP) or warning that users must acknowledge before signing on, Remote Desktop Canary can now bypass this easily with synthetic input. As a result, you can now test conditions beyond the login screen using Canary’s new OCR event detection engine.

Bypass Login Notification Banners — Bypassing login notification banners with synthetic input, allowing application and desktop startup times to be profiled with OCR-based alerting.

4. Keep Remote Desktop Canary Up And Running 24/7 With the Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter Applet

Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter is a companion utility that ships with Remote Desktop Canary v2.0+. It “babysits” the actively running Remote Desktop Canary tests – by itself running on a different VM from the VM running Remote Desktop Canary.

As a result, it is able to make sure that Remote Desktop Canary tests stay running at all times, and function properly, even in scenarios like:

When the Remote Desktop Canary system is rebooted, such as for routine maintenance or patch installation
If the Remote Desktop Canary Logon Testing Module stops running for any reason
When an active Remote Desktop connection to the Remote Desktop Canary system is interrupted, resulting in a disconnected session that would prevent synthetic input from properly bypassing login banners

Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter babysits the user session running Remote Desktop Canary — The Remote Desktop Canary Kickstarter applet keeps a watchful eye on the VM running your Remote Desktop Canary workflows.

And Number 5 . . . Toggle Workflows In and Out of Maintenance Mode

Part of what makes a good monitoring tool is how well you can juggle all of the tasks at hand.

Therefore, while Remote Desktop Canary is running continuous synthetic RDS login tests, you can toggle specific workflows in and out of maintenance mode with a single mouse click. When placed in maintenance mode, Remote Desktop Canary will suspend testing against that RDS collection or group of servers. This prevents alerts from being generated when you take server(s) offline for patching or other maintenance.

Right mouse click on any workflow to take it in or out of maintenance mode.

But That’s Not All . . .

This is all pretty powerful stuff as any admin can tell you, and we’re always updating and adding new features.

See what we’re up to now: Learn more about Remote Desktop Canary, including all of its features and how it is priced. Or, you can request a free 14-day trial of Remote Desktop Canary in your environment, click here.

Updated: January 2021.

RDS Logins & Logon Failure Tracking (And More) in Remote Desktop Commander v4.5+

September 27, 2018 By admin Leave a Comment

Though later versions of our Remote Desktop Commander Suite build on these key features, it’s worth drilling into these specific capabilities in RDS logins and logon failure tracking (plus some extra stuff we’re sure will interest you) that were introduced starting with v4.5:

Consolidate All RDS Logins and Logon Failures, Regardless Whether Or Not They Occurred On Session Hosts Or Remote Desktop Gateway Servers

Our CEO, Andy Milford, has written at length about the challenges faced when attempting to correlate RDP logon failure data from session hosts at his PureRDS.org blog. Attempting to track successful RDP logins is no picnic either, as multiple log files from multiple different systems – the session host servers and remote desktop gateway servers – must be consulted and the information correlated.

In version 4.5 of the Remote Desktop Commander Suite, the Remote Desktop Reporter Service automatically collects and correlates key events from event log files on Session Host servers and Remote Desktop Gateway servers. The result is a treasure trove of valuable login and logon failure data that it retains in its SQL database, allowing us to deliver the incredible new features described below.

Geolocate RDS Logins and Logon Failures In the User IP Geolocation Dashboard – Find Out Where Your Users Are Working From, and Locate the Source Of Brute Force RDP Hack Attempts

Geolocate RDP Logon Failures — Perform deep analysis of RDP logon failures and user logins using the User IP Geolocation Dashboard.

Remote Desktop Services login and logon failure data correlation from session hosts and gateways is a valuable feature in its own right, but the rich visualizations of this data is what sets Remote Desktop Commander Version 4.5+ apart from the competition. The User IP Geolocation Dashboard combines IP geolocation data with interactive worldwide maps and tabular, filterable tables so administrators can zero in on both legitimate RDS users and hackers.

Locate The Source of RDP Brute Force Hack Attempts — Filter RDP logon failure and login data by username, time frame, computer, and sort the data by username, region, country etc.

Our dashboard is completely extensible via PowerShell scripts, which are designed to receive selected server names, usernames, and IP addresses as input parameters. This is especially useful for the remediation of inbound hack attempts.

Remediate Brute Force RDP Attacks — Extend the capabilities of the dashboard with PowerShell

Instantly build reports from the filtered RDP login and logon failure data in the dashboard, or simply export the data to comma-delimited text.

Report on RDP Logon Failures — Export RDP login data and generate reports in PDF, Word, or Excel.

Schedule Daily User Login and Logon Failure Reports

RDP Logon Failure Reports — Build RDP login reports manually, or schedule them to run daily to gain insight on where users are connecting from.

Scheduled reports make it easy to keep track of both where your users are routinely connecting from, as well as the sources of hacking and penetration attempts. Group login and logon failure data by country or by user. With routine review of these reports, you can quickly spot geographic RDP login anomalies that could be suggestive of a compromised user account.

See The Actual IP Address and Geolocation Information for User Sessions In Existing Time Tracking Reports.

By default, the Microsoft Terminal Services client (MSTSC) does not report its actual global IP address when connecting to a terminal server. When connecting through a Remote Desktop Gateway system, no IP address information is transmitted at all. Many admins have requested that we transform the incorrect or missing IP address information with the actual global IP address of the user, whether or not they are connecting through a RD Gateway.

Based on this feedback, we have retrofitted several existing reports, such as the User Sessions – Session Details By User report family, to include the correct global IP of the user based on the correlated log data now collected by our central polling service. Also, when possible, the global IP address is accompanied with the geographic region of the user’s ISP

Remote Desktop User Time Tracking Report — Many existing user activity reports now include the resolved, Global IP of the user, and ISP geolocation information when available.

Massively Reduce Database Storage Requirements With Performance Threshold Database Pruning

As you can see, we’ve mainly talked about logins and logon failures so far, and we’re talking about lots of data that we work with. So, we have to be ready to handle it all. Which brings us to a related feature.

Collecting in-depth performance data on a per-user and per-program basis with our agent service is great, but it’s easy to generate a lot of data in SQL by doing so. Version 4.5+ has a nifty new feature that we call “Performance Threshold Database Pruning.”

Now, in addition to purging out agent-based performance data based on date, you can elect to keep only the agent data associated with times of high load on session host servers. You can define what you consider to be high load both in terms of CPU usage or memory utilization, or a combination of both. Using this new feature can drastically reduce the amount of data stored in SQL over time, in many cases by over 80%.

Control RDS Performance Database Growth — Using Performance Threshold Database Tuning, tightly control the size of your SQL database growth.

. . . And What’s The Latest?

Of course, features change and mature, so be sure to find out the latest developments with our Remote Desktop Commander Suite by requesting a web demo with an RDPSoft solutions expert.

Updated: November 2020.

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