Many open source tools are available to monitor a LAN. Do you believe these open source tools are as effective as the commercial of the shelf products? Are they as safe? Are there hidden security risks within the open source products that the end user does not know about?
My
initial response should be taken with a grain of salt. I
haven’t been able to afford paid software like Observium, so I
don’t have a valid basis for comparison, but after trying to install
Nagios, and Cactii, and LibreSNMP and finally settling on the clunky
and annoying Spiceworks Network Monitor, I am inclined to think that
while effective, and potentially as powerful as paid software, the
Open Source Freeware is probably not the most usable option, and an
administrator would probably save himself a lot of headache by
purchasing a program that would probably pay for itself many times
over within the first year.
I can imagine that there would be some sort of security risks inherent in any network monitoring programs, but from what I’ve been able to tell, there are as many people that love reporting on security flaws as there are that love exploiting them, so I would assert that Open Source Software, when properly reviewed and vetted, is as safe as any other software on the market.