Building a Secure Nagios Server

The objective of this paper is to document a secure installation and deployment strategy for Nagios, which is a very comprehensive and flexible network monitoring application. One of the reasons that I chose this particular package for my assignment is that the consulting firm that I work for has many clients with Nagios monitoring systems and I felt that it was important for our clients that I look at the way we are deploying this software in their environments and determine for myself whether we are deploying this software in a secure and effective way for our clients. I have, during this process, seen some security flaws in the way we are deploying this systems and I am using this opportunity to create a template for future deployments as well as to go back and adjust the systems which are currently in production.