Proactive Monitoring: How to Fix Network Problems Before They Happen
No IT solution is flawless – that’s an unfortunate fact. Your business technology may be the most advanced of its kind, but eventually, it will cause a problem. Companies know that never having an issue with their tech solutions is impossible. As a result, they’ve (wisely) focused on trying to prevent tech problems before they happen. One method enterprises use to do this is proactive monitoring.
Proactive monitoring means your business is continuously searching for signs that indicate a problem is about to happen. This approach allows IT teams to discover issues that could drastically affect their technology and stop them in their tracks. Network teams can benefit from proactive monitoring practices and tools as well. Read on to discover how your enterprise can leverage proactive network monitoring to protect your network from issues 24/7.
Automatic network problem discovery
In order for a proactive network monitoring solution to work, it need to be able to discover any problems automatically. Traditionally, IT teams would only find problems manually – either through an employee reporting a problem or via the network team browsing network data. However, this method of finding network issues is outdated and doesn’t account for every problem. Problems with minuscule effects might not be immediately detected by your network team, but they might blossom into major issues before long. Your company needs to find issues like this and deal with them before they become something larger.
Real-time alerts
When a problem does occur on your network, your team needs to know about it as soon as it happens. The shorter the time between the issue striking and your team knowing about it, the better. NPMs are continuously scanning the network for problems. If it sees something out of the ordinary – spikes in bandwidth usage, slow data transfer between two points, etc. – it will immediately raise a red flag. That prompts your network team to investigate the issue.
Proactive monitoring also helps you discover problems that happen on your network after hours. If your network suffers an issue when your team is out of the office and you don’t learn about until you go back to work, you’ll waste time trying to figure out what’s gone wrong. With proactive network monitoring, you’ll know when the issue happened and where, meaning you can go straight to administering a fix.
Hidden malware
One of the greatest benefits of proactive network monitoring is finding malware currently hiding in your network. Most businesses believe malware doesn’t pose a threat until it begins attacking your systems. However, malware can deliberately hide itself for extended periods of time before striking. If you only provide a reactive approach to dealing with malware, your business will inevitably be hurt by malware that could have been dealt with much earlier.
Proactive monitoring solutions look for suspicious data currently resting on a node or device connected to the network. By examining this data, alongside other signs of potential malware (abnormal network resource usage, for example), network teams can discover potentially malicious data hiding on their network.
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Daniel Hein
Dan is a tech writer who writes about Cybersecurity for Solutions Review. He graduated from Fitchburg State University with a Bachelor's in Professional Writing. You can reach him at dhein@solutionsreview.com
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