NTP

Synchronizes clocks across systems, critical for logging and certificates.

Network Time Protocol synchronizes clocks across systems, which is foundational for accurate log correlation, certificate validity checks, and time-sensitive protocols such as Kerberos. Skewed clocks can cause authentication failures and make incident timelines unreliable during forensics. Because attackers can abuse time tampering to evade detection or invalidate certificates, NTP sources should be trusted and authenticated where possible. NTP servers are also exploited as amplification vectors in distributed denial of service attacks, so unneeded query features should be restricted.