NTP Synchronization and Verification

Compliance Info: EventSentry's NTP monitoring helps with PCI requirement 10.4.

EventSentry can both verify and synchronize the local time with a RFC 1769 and RFC 1305 NTP server (up to version 3), either in addition to an existing time synchronization (e.g. Active Directory) or as the sole mechanism to synchronize time on all monitored servers and workstations.

When the time between a monitored host and the NTP server is out of sync, then EventSentry will attempt to synchronize the time (if configured) and can also log a message to the event log, reporting the detected time difference.

Features

The NTP synchronization feature is very flexible and can easily be customized. The following configuration options are available:

• Verification Interval (how frequently to verify the time)
• Maximum Tolerance (the maximum number of milliseconds the local time may be out-of-sync)
• Adjust Local Time (whether or not to adjust the local time when outside of tolerance)
• Recurring Logging (log the current time difference regularly to the event log, even when within tolerance)
• NTP Servers (the list of NTP servers)

Network latency is taken into consideration when calculating the clock offset, with a precision down to milliseconds.