Utilizing Fing and Nmap

Marcus Brommer

CST-110

October 9, 2016

Deborah Haralson        

Utilizing Fing and Nmap

After taking some time and getting to know my way around Fing, and Nmap, it is very clear that they can both be very helpful in IT and cybersecurity. Fing and Nmap are both scanning tools that can be especially convenient when troubleshooting and securing networks. Fing is an application that you can be downloaded on your mobile device, and it will provide you with a descriptive list of all the devices that are connected to your network. Fing will provide you with practical information like MAC addresses, operating systems, and host names of each of the devices that are connected to the network. You can do port scans, ping tests, you can log information to see changes on an IP and even do a wake on Lan which I believe is just a way of waking up the router from the device you are using Fing on. Information taken from the Fing app is even more useful when paired with Nmap, one of the most well-known scanning tools. When you use this simple information from Fing, you can look for open ports and tell which ones are filtered by firewalls, know what kind of devices are on a network and the version of OS they are using, and so much more information. Knowing which ports are open or more vulnerable is a great way to be proactive and know which are more likely to be “hacked”. Nmap can also be used to make sure that services on servers are running. An important part of Nmap is that it can be expended to make sure you don’t even have any unwanted services running on a machine causing vulnerability. Another way Nmap can be taken advantage of is by using the scans to make sure your firewalls are protecting the ports that they need to be. Being fully aware of how your network appears and how easily it is viewed by others makes it much easier to troubleshoot and investigate when you are experiencing issues, and it can even help prevent any unwanted activity from happening in the first place. Both Fing and Nmap are great tools to prevent any unwanted activity on a network and they pair together incredibly well. With proper knowledge of each of these applications, a safer environment is much easier to obtain.

References

Lyon, G. (1997, September). NMAP. Network Mapper.

Fing is a great app to see who is on your network | Computerworld. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.computerworld.com/article/2472460/networking/fing-is-a-great-app-to-see-who-is-on-your-network.html 

Chepil, V. (2010, September). Fing. FING.

Macintosh- Unix. (2015, September 30). OS X El Capitan desktop. Macintosh.

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