According to one report, cyber attackers spend an average of 11 days snooping around after breaching a network before they are detected. That discovery often only comes to light because the hackers have deployed ransomware. And cybercriminals are always hunting for new ways to sneak onto your network, compromise your resources, and steal or ransom your precious data. In these cases, what you don’t know really can hurt you, as Quest’s CEO wrote about in this post about monitoring and alerting. But plenty of other IT-related issues make a case for monitoring and alerting.
Monitoring and alerting defined
Network monitoring solutions typically offer these standard core functionalities:
- Discovery
Continuous search for devices that are present on your infrastructure - Monitoring
Continuous monitoring of critical infrastructure components and reporting of metrics like open network ports, available storage, and uptime - Mapping
A visual display that gives you a complete view of the health of your infrastructure across all monitored devices - Reporting and analysis
Current, historical, and comparative reports that expose trends and help you stay ahead of problems - Alerting and remediation
Real-time alerts as to any changes or potential issues along with remediation guidance for return to normal operations as quickly as possible
Here are five key benefits you should expect from effective monitoring alerting solutions or services.
1. Improve productivity
One survey found that professionals lose an average of 22 minutes daily dealing with IT-related issues. Those are costly minutes as productivity drops to zero while your IT team tries to narrow down the source of the problem. An effective monitoring and alerting solution quickly alerts you when an IT problem pops up and identifies its source. That keeps downtime to a minimum.
Outside monitoring and alerting services can be an invaluable approach for overtaxed IT teams, providing you with 24/7 coverage that includes essential network maintenance and ensures continual updating, monitoring, and analysis of your IT infrastructure so you can effortlessly keep operations humming.
2. Enhance infrastructure security
With data protection top of mind for most IT pros today, ensuring your organization’s data is always secure is crucial. With a monitoring and alerting solution or service, you can always be confident that your security measures are up and running as expected. That brings us to security information and event management (SIEM), one of the best tools for advanced cybersecurity, overall threat protection, and compliance. SIEM typically relies on monitoring and alerting solutions or services to identify unusual traffic and behavior, unauthorized devices trying to access your network or other suspicious activities.
3. Accelerate remediation and guide disaster recovery
The faster you know about a disaster or downtime, the quicker you can respond. Network monitoring and real-time alerts can identify events that quickly trigger your disaster recovery plan. You can bring your backup systems online and keep everything running without missing a beat.
4. Track web applications
Many companies rely on web apps to support customers, partners, and supply chains. So, any time an app is unavailable can result in a negative customer experience and lost sales while halting productivity. Companies also rely on web apps to efficiently work with partners and their supply chains. Network monitoring lets you stay on top of issues with your website and web apps to find and remediate problems before your customers are even aware of them.
5. Reduce costs
Network monitoring detects both compromised and overwhelmed systems—two leading causes of downtime. Identifying and remediating a compromised system reduces downtime, limiting potential costs and impacts. Overwhelmed systems often result in overprovisioning data storage and network resources as a typical IT response to ensure that their organization can meet demand. With a monitoring solution in place, IT teams can deploy the resources they need today and have a clearer picture of what those needs will be in the future.
What to look for in a monitoring and alerting solution
While every organization is different, there are some basic features and functionalities to look for in an effective monitoring and alerting service. 24/7 real-time coverage is crucial. Expert resources and sophisticated tools that help ensure uninterrupted operations should also be on your list. Also, a proven track record is a must. Coverage options depend on your specific needs but can include:
- Server and virtual service monitoring and support
- VMware ESX/vCenter monitoring and support
- Switch and wide-area network (WAN) monitoring and patching
- Firewall and intrusion prevention system monitoring and patching
- Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) monitoring and patching
Monitor and alerting strengthen your security posture and let you proactively protect your systems and data by informing you of every event that could impact your operations. In today’s high-risk world, it’s another technology layer you should consider adding to ensure business continuity and minimize downtime.
Thank you for trusting us to help with your cybersecurity needs.
Contact us any time—we’re always happy to help.
Adam
