AN INTEGRATED SECOPS AGENT FRAMEWORK FOR REAL-TIME VULNERABILITY TRACKING AND CROSS-PLATFORM SYSTEM MONITORING

This paper presented the design, implementation, and evaluation of a Vulnerability Tracking and System Monitoring platform built around a cross-platform SecOps Agent. The proposed system addresses the well-documented fragmentation between operational performance monitoring and security vulnerability tracking by integrating a lightweight Python-based [7] monitoring agent, a FastAPI backend [1], a PostgreSQL database [4], Prometheus with Pushgateway [2] for metrics, and Grafana [3] and React.js [6] for visualization into a single modular architecture deployed using Docker [5]. Deployment across four endpoints running Windows and Linux successfully demonstrated real-time collection of system metrics, automatic generation of a 1,342-entry software inventory with 33 flagged vulnerable or outdated packages cross-referenced against the NVD [8], classification of 97 open-port findings by risk level following OWASP security guidelines [9], and consolidated reporting of 99 total security findings through a unified dashboard. Comparative analysis showed that the automated approach reduces administrator effort for a routine monitoring cycle from roughly 95–140 minutes to under two minutes of active review time, while relying entirely on open-source components to keep infrastructure costs low and scalable. These results confirm the technical and economic feasibility of the proposed architecture for small-to-medium Indian organizations and educational institutions, and establish a solid foundation for the future enhancements identified as priorities for continued development: live CVE database integration with the NVD [8], digital signing of agent reports, AI-based anomaly detection, and mobile dashboard access.

[1] S. Ramírez, FastAPI Documentation. [Online]. Available: https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/ [2] Prometheus Authors, Prometheus Documentation. [Online]. Available: https://prometheus.io/docs/ [3] Grafana Labs, Grafana Documentation. [Online]. Available: https://grafana.com/docs/ [4] The PostgreSQL Global Development Group, PostgreSQL Documentation. [Online]. Available: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/ [5] Docker Inc., Docker Documentation. [Online]. Available: https://docs.docker.com/ [6] React Development Team, React Documentation. [Online]. Available: https://react.dev/ [7] Python Software Foundation, Python Documentation. [Online]. Available: https://docs.python.org/3/ [8] National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), National Vulnerability Database (NVD). [Online]. Available: https://nvd.nist.gov/ [9] OWASP Foundation, OWASP Top 10 Web Application Security Risks. [Online]. Available: https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/ [10] W. R. Stevens and S. A. Rago, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, 3rd ed. Boston, MA, USA: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2013.