User Activity Report for Managers

[usanitary]

Management has asked for a weekly summary of department web activity on our new PA-500.

I created a User Activity Report for each department but these reports are not conscise and difficult to read, especially for managers who would like a summary. 

Our old device had a group report of user web traffic that had graphs with helpful info like most time spent onliine, most blocked, etc. I am sure there are several other administrators out there who had to do this and I am intersted in your solution.  I am happy with the PA-500's real time monitoring, blocking, etc.

I searched the KB and forums and did not come up with anything helpful. My question for the community: Have you created a good custom report you can share? Do you use a 3rd party program or appliance to achieve these goals? If so, what?

Thanks for your time,

Mike

[Raido_Rattameister]

Firewall will give you top graphs under Monitor > PDF Reports > Manage PDF Reports

You can add whatever fields you want there.

If you want department based then go to Monitor > Manage Custom Reports

This is really flexible and allows to add whatever fields you like.

[usanitary]

Thanks for responding Raido but this is not what I am looking for.  I understand how to send a department report but it is too cluttered, not sortable, etc.

I am looking for a specific report that addresses my description or 3rd party recommendations.

[dannon]

We also have this problem.  We have use LIghtspeed, M86, Cymphonix, Bloxx, and now Palo for internet filtering in the last 10 years.  By far Lightspeed had the most useful reports for managers: they included things like top keyword searches, suspicious keyword searches, and lots of graphs (pie, chart, etc).

Many times I need to run a report for a specific user to send to their manager for web activity.  I can easily get 200+ pages of data.  I've been told this is useless and takes too long to view.

I have asked to have reporting overhauled on Palo, but nothing yet.  I was really exicited for PanOS 7 cause I was told this was much better.  Alas, it was only ACC and not reporting.

I've even asked to have the live Traffic and URL logs be color customizable.  I'd love to see blocked sessions in red and allowed session in green, for example.

Just my 2 cents.

Dannon

[usanitary]

Thanks for your response Dannon. Like you, I am happy with most aspects of our Palo, but would like to see some improvement in reporting.

In the meatime, has anyone found a workaround for good executive summary-ish web traffic reporting? I am considering 3rd party tools like Colasoft, Manage Engine, or Untangle. Or do you pull the data from the db and use something like Crystal Reports?

I do not have any experience with these products and am interested in the community's input.

[usanitary · Accepted solution]

Just to close the loop on this, we ended up purchasing Wavecrest Cyfin, which has a tool that generates manager-friendly reports. It is not ideal, but a huge improvement over the Palo Alto reports.