# Enable or disable status surveillance

Status surveillance generates an alert when engines change to an unknown state.

##

By default, there is no warning to administrators if the status of the engines changes to an unknown state. You can optionally activate the status surveillance feature. The status surveillance feature generates an alert if a single engine or none of the engines in a cluster do not send a status update for 15 minutes.

For more details about the product and how to configure features, click Help or press F1.

## Steps

1. Select Configuration.
2. Right-click the NGFW Engine, then select Options.
3. Select or deselect Status Surveillance.

## Next steps

Make sure that System Alerts are escalated so that the notification is sent if status surveillance detects a failure.