Cyber Technology

NTLM is a challenge/response protocol where in the authenticating server or domain controller issues a challenge which the client authenticates using the password hash as a key. NTLM has been repeatedly patched over the years to address security vulnerabilities. The oldest Windows systems can only send back the LM response originally developed in the 80s for LanManager. With NT Microsoft developed a stronger hash and response mechanism called NTLM but continued supporting LM. Vulnerabilities were found in NTLM prompting NTLMv2. For more information on NTLM see “Network security: Do not store LAN Manager hash value on next password change”. These patches affect connectivity to/from older versions of Windows and this setting allows you to tweak NTLM on this computer to be strict and less compatible with older systems or more compatible but less secure. Note that the values for this setting impact how the computer handles NTLM authentication both as a client and as the authentic...

PRTG is an option geared more at larger networks that span several locations, or even countries. It has strong monitoring focused around downtime prevention and prediction, but also boasts many of the stronger granular tools to let you examine traffic on a smaller scale in terms of users and protocols. Similar to SolarWinds' software above, PRTG tries to be much more preventative than palliative. Alerts and monitoring attempt to predict and prevent the occurrence of problems by using metrics and history to find trends and alert you before it reaches a catastrophic point. Coupled with PRTG's ability to examine bandwidth on a smaller scale gives you an overall balanced tool for network monitoring on a large scale. find more :  network security level