Say you have Linux servers in your company and you need access to them from either the LAN or WAN, but you’re leery of leaving the SSH ports open. What do you do? One way to secure those ports is to obscure them a tool called knockd. Knockd works with port knocking, which is a method of dynamically opening network ports by connecting via a predefined sequence. With knockd, you define a knocking sequence that, when used, will allow the SSH connection through. It’s like adding a secret knock that must be used before SSH will allow you in.