If you have a large number of computers connected to a local area network, it becomes really essential to scan and check for security vulnerabilities in each system. Installing an Antivirus or a spyware program takes care of the virus threats, but how do you make sure the computer network is secured from hacking attempts, amongst other network threats ?

GFI Languard – Overview

GFI Languard scans your network computers to detect security vulnerabilities, missing patches that may be present in all the computers connected to a common home/office/Wi-Fi network. After Installing GFI Languard – you can scan each computer, check whether it is secured or not and install the missing patches.

All with very little administrative effort and from a central computer – no need to install the program on each computer and run networks scans separately.

The network scans are performed using vulnerability check databases based on OVAL and SANS Top 20, which provide more than 15,000 assessments when your network is scanned. The program can patch both Microsoft as well as Non Microsoft applications e.g when you run the scan it will detect whether you are running the latest version of Firefox or not. If a new version is available, it will automatically update your browser to the latest version.

Downloading And Installing GFI Languard

Although the program isn’t free for both personal and business use, you can download a 30 day trial version from the GFI Languard page and give the program a try.

During installation, Windows Firewall will block some features of Languard on all the public or private networks where your computer is currently connected to. Hit the “Allow Access” button and enter the administrator account credentials on the next step to finish installing GFI Languard on your computer.

Using GFI Languard

The first time you run GFI Languard on any of the computers connected to the network, it’s advised to perform a complete network scan. You can always perform a customized scan or set up scheduled network scans at a later point of time.

When you run the complete network scan, the program will scan all the computers that are currently connected to the network for security vulnerabilities, missing patches (Microsoft as well as Non Microsoft), critical security updates and so on.

I ran the network scan on my desktop and laptop that are connected through a LAN connection and here are the reports:

As you can see, I have more than 60 missing security updates and close to 70 security vulnerabilities. And I thought my network is completely safe !

Now you can choose to fix these security vulnerabilities by clicking the “Remediate vulnerabilities” button. Here are the results when I performed a complete scan of my home computer network:

Fixing the security vulnerabilities is quite easy, head over to the”Remediate” tab and select all or some of the patches which you want to install. Then hit the “Start” button at the bottom of the page and GFI Languard will automatically download the required patches and install it on the concerned computer.

You can further get a complete security overview of your computer network from GFI Languard’s dashboard. See example

Note: If you are looking for a network monitoring program, we highly recommend using GFI web monitor for monitoring your computer network.

Here are some of the other features of GFI Languard that are worth noting:

• Scan for unnecessary open ports and check whether no port hijacking is in place.
• Receive automatic alerts of new security holes as and when discovered.
• Check whether security auditing is enabled network wide.
• Powerful monitoring dashboard showing security trends for a specific time interval.
• Custom vulnerability checks – choose the custom databases and patches with which you want to check the current security status of your computer network.
• Run scheduled scans at regular intervals, also deploy third party programs and patches network wide.

Have you tried GFI Languard before ? Which network security assessment program do you use ? Please share your ideas in the comments section.