The Beacon module is automatically provisioned and installed with every agent. It keeps the TrustKeeper portal informed of basic information required by other modules and gives the portal a way to know if an agent is still active.

Beacon pings the TrustKeeper portal to simulate a heartbeat for its host agent at a regular interval, by default every fifteen minutes. With each contact, Beacon sends its host’s IP address. Beacon’s ping for Windows and Linux are identical except that on Linux, Beacon includes a message version and beacon version.

Once a day, Beacon sends an expanded report to the TrustKeeper, generally just after midnight if the host is on.  If the host is turned off or the agent’s service is stopped, Beacon will send its full report after the host or the service next starts up. This report contains:

• Host name
• Local time
• Whether that operating system is Windows or Linux
• Full version of the operating system that the agent is installed on
• List of adapters including the IP and MAC addresses of the host
• What version its agent is
• Installed agent components. For some it includes:
  • A hash of the last successful report of each component
  • Start times of the component's most recent successful run

The Last communication field in the portal’s My Agents refers to the last time that Beacon sent its full report.