Monitoring Logon/Logoff's and internet usage

[pmeswani]

Can anyone suggest a piece of free s/w for monitoring user logons and logoff's? I've googled a few but it's never going to find everything and would prefer word of mouth anyways....

also i need to monitor a users internet usage (by the way, there is no server involved here) is there a local policy to switch off wiping the history?

TIA

I agree with what Sysman said. But on the same token, you may want to look at a solution such as SolarWinds for Logon/Logoff events (or some other Syslog / SNMP tool). If you have auditory requirements, you may want to look at some form of SIEM solution. As I am working for a client that makes a SIEM solution, I will refrain from making any recommendations.

For Internet usage, well that''s a whole different ball game. I would look at getting a dedicated web filtering tool such as Websense, Bluecoat or some other industrial strength content filtering software. You could get away with some crude proxy server, but only if you want to manually go through the logs and create pivot tables, etc from it to get what you want.

[Sysman]

It would help if you told us what flavour of OS you are running.

If no server, can we assume this is a private system? Do you have a budget, or are you looking for free / cheap?

[stingman123]

Can anyone suggest a piece of free s/w for monitoring user logons and logoff's? I've googled a few but it's never going to find everything and would prefer word of mouth anyways....

also i need to monitor a users internet usage (by the way, there is no server involved here) is there a local policy to switch off wiping the history?

TIA