Notifications about network activity
Alert email messages provide notification about activities or events logged. These email messages also provide notification about log severities that are recorded, such as a critical or emergency.
You can send alert email messages to up to three email addresses. Alert messages are also logged and can be viewed from the Event Log menu, in the System Event log file.
You can use the alert email feature to monitor logs for log messages, and to send email notification about a specific activity or event logged. For example, if you require notification about administrators logging in and out, you can configure an alert email that is sent whenever an administrator logs in and out. You can also base alert email messages on the severity levels of the logs.
Before configuring alert email, you must configure at least one DNS server if you are configuring with an Fully Qualified Domain Server (FQDN). The FortiGate unit uses the SMTP server name to connect to the mail server, and must look up this name on your DNS server. You can also specify an IP address.
The default minimum log severity level is Alert. If the FortiGate unit collects more than one log message before an interval is reached, the FortiGate unit combines the messages and sends out one alert email.
How to configure email notifications
The following explains how to configure an alert email notification for IPsec tunnel errors, firewall authentication failure, configuration changes and FortiGuard license expiry.
- In System > Advanced, under Email Service, configure the SMTP server.
The SMTP server settings allow the FortiGate unit to know exactly where the email will be sent from, as well as who to send it to. The SMTP server must be a server that does not support SSL/TLS connections; if the SMTP server does, the alert email configuration will not work. The FortiGate unit does not currently support SSL/TLS connections for SMTP servers.
- In Log & Report > Alert E-mail, enter the source email in the Email From field, and up to three target addresses in the Email To fields.
- Below the email entry, you can configure the email responses. By default, the Send alert email for the following is enabled. Select the check boxes beside IPsec tunnel errors, Configuration changes and Firewall authentication failure.
These alerts will be sent to the email address specified when the trigger occurs. For example, a user attempts to connect to the branch office of the company but cannot; the FortiGate unit detects an IPsec tunnel error, records the event, and then sends the notice to the email address specified in the SMTP server settings.
- Select FortiGuard license expiry time: and then enter 10 so that the email notification will be sent ten days prior to the FortiGuard license expiration.
You can choose up to 100 days prior to when the license will expire. The default time is 15 days. By using this alert email notification, you can easily know when to send an re-registration request long before the expiry.
Log devices