Security Monitoring

Monitoring watches file integrity, authentication attempts, privilege changes, outbound connections and unusual query patterns, with a baseline established first so normal activity is known before anything is called anomalous. Alerting is deliberately tuned to the change rather than the state: a condition present yesterday and still present today is not news today, and a monitor that re-reports it trains people to ignore the channel. Unacknowledged findings escalate on a schedule instead of repeating at the same level. Alert thresholds are set per signal, and every alert names what was observed, when, and what action is expected. Logs are shipped off the monitored host so an attacker who gains access cannot erase the record of it. Integrity checks compare against a stored manifest and report additions as well as modifications, since a new file in a writable directory is the usual shape of a backdoor. If the monitor itself cannot write its state it fails loudly rather than silently reporting all-clear, because a scanner that cannot run and a scanner that finds nothing are indistinguishable in a summary count.

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