Terminology Index
Glossary
2953 terms
SNMP
Simple Network Management Protocol: a protocol for monitoring and configuring network devices, widely deployed and historically prone to weak community-string authentication that attackers exploit.
SNMP lets administrators query and configure routers, switches, and other devices and receive event traps. Foundational to network operations, it has a security history: older versions (v1/v2c) use community-string authentication that is easily intercepted or guessed; SNMPv3 introduced strong authentication and encryption. Defenders harden SNMP by deploying v3, restricting access to management networks, and detecting SNMP scanning or abuse, while still relying on it for operational monitoring.
Introduced in: Networking Foundations
Examples
- Monitoring switch interfaces via SNMP polling.
- Hardening with SNMPv3 instead of weak community strings.
- Restricting SNMP access to the management network only.
