Every port open on an internet-facing system is a potential entry point. Legitimate services need to be exposed, but unexpected changes, such as a new port appearing, a service stopping, or a known port moving to a different address, can be an early indicator of misconfiguration, unauthorised access, or a compromised system.
Our Host & Port Monitoring service continuously scans your specified hosts and IP addresses, tracking the state of open ports and services over time. When anything changes, you receive an email alert straight away.
Continuous Scanning
Your hosts are scanned at regular intervals around the clock. Every open TCP and UDP port is recorded, along with the service responding and any associated banner or version information.
Instant Email Alerts
The moment a change is detected, an alert is sent to your nominated contact. No dashboards to check, no manual review required.
External Perspective
We scan from outside your network, the same vantage point an attacker would use. This gives you an accurate picture of what is genuinely exposed to the internet, regardless of internal firewall rules.
No Agent Required
The service requires no software installation on your systems. Simply provide the hosts or IP ranges you want monitored and we handle everything else.
What We Monitor
You provide us with the hosts or IP addresses you want monitored. These might include:
- public-facing web servers
- mail servers
- VPN endpoints
- remote access gateways
- cloud-hosted infrastructure
- any other internet-accessible systems
We scan each host at regular intervals and record the current state of all open TCP and UDP ports, the services responding on those ports, and any associated banners or version information.
Alerting on Change
Whenever a scan detects a difference from the previously recorded state, we send an email alert to your nominated contact. Alerts include:
- the host or IP address affected
- the port or ports involved
- what changed (new port open, port closed, service change)
- the time the change was detected
This means you are notified quickly whether a new port has appeared unexpectedly, a critical service has stopped responding, or a service has changed in a way that warrants investigation.
Why Changes Matter
Open port changes often go unnoticed without active monitoring. Common causes include:
- software updates or reinstalls that enable additional services
- misconfigured firewall rules
- remote access tools installed without authorisation
- malware opening a backdoor or command-and-control channel
- cloud infrastructure changes made outside of normal change control
Not every change is malicious, but every change should be known about and accounted for. If you did not make the change, you need to know about it.
Get in touch to discuss host and port monitoring for your organisation.