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Using Alerts to Review Changes in the Key Environment

Key Manager raises alerts when the key environment is modified unexpectedly. For example, keys that were added into the managed environment without the use of Key Manager raise alerts when they are found. This is to be expected when adding new hosts: any keys that were already present on the host will raise an alert. However, key-related alerts may also indicate manual and unauthorized key modifications. Key Manager admins can use alerts to quickly find out what keys have been found or lost, and perform corrective operations on those keys if necessary.

On the Home→System page, you can click Alerts to see a list of all the active alerts in the system. Alerts are also listed on the Logs→Alert page.

The following is an example workflow for determining what changes in the managed environment have caused alerts.

  1. On the Home→System page, check the Alerts section to determine the alerts that require attention, then perform either of the following:

    • To see all the active alerts, click Alerts.

    • To see all the active alerts of a certain type, click the alert type under the Alerts section.

    Performing either of the previous actions takes you to the Logs→Alert page, with search criteria set to display alerts accordingly.

    If you want to set your own filters on the Logs→Alert page, you will need to first clear the search criteria before you can set filter criteria.

  2. Click on an alert to display its details. For key-related alerts, the details panel displays information about the key, including the key fingerprint, host(s) where the key is present, and the file location(s).

    You can quickly access the key via Key Manager by clicking the Object link in the details panel, then perform operations on that key (such as signoff, removal, and restoration).

  3. You should Dismiss the alert if there is nothing wrong with the key, or Resolve the alert to indicate that the necessary corrective actions have been performed on the key.

For information about the command-line client commands for managing alerts, see Alert Commands.