It’s that “spooky” time of the year again, made even more so by the latest events. While trick-or-treaters, Halloween parties, and blockbuster horror flicks are likely at minimum this time around, one scary element remains certain: cybercrime. And it’s in full force more than ever before.
With COVID-19 shifting many businesses and workers to the online sphere, hackers are now spoiled for target selection. Plenty have now changed focus from individuals and small companies to government organizations, with INTERPOL reporting rates of spam and malware incidents skyrocketing between January and April 2020.
To ensure your data safety in these trying times, experts recommend continuous network monitoring to keep potential risks, data breaches, and outages at bay.
Let’s dive into the security benefits of continuous network monitoring, and how you and your business can stick to more treats than tricks this Halloween.
First off, what is network monitoring?
Network monitoring refers to the process of continuously keeping an eye on an IT network for hardware and connectivity issues, malicious activities, and potential vulnerabilities. Devices monitored can include routers, firewalls, servers, monitors, and even third-party systems and software.
Having a constant monitoring process allows IT administrators to easily and quickly spot problems, rectifying them as soon as possible. Network monitoring tools can also produce reports on its findings, with many offering automated and customization capabilities.
What are the benefits of continuous network monitoring?
With growing demand across the globe, network intelligence monitoring is crucial in running modern businesses across many high-profile industries, such as the healthcare industry. It helps organizations:
1. Identify and resolve threats faster
The greatest benefit of continuous network monitoring is the ability to catch issues and potential risks as they arise. This allows IT experts to fix system problems in their earlier stages and at a faster rate, saving your business from unnecessary downtime, decreased productivity, and lost profits.
Network monitoring doesn’t just help in identifying and fixing bugs; it also enables administrators to get to the bottom of such issues. These tools can provide “live network maps” that help you trace problems to their origin, allowing you to eliminate them once and for all.
Additionally, there are automated network management solutions that transition manual tasks to software applications that are able to complete them repeatedly and reliably, while helping you save time and money.
2. Improve business performance with regular reports
The ability to keep your network threat- and error-free will inevitably lead to greater business performance. With a healthy system, your employees can communicate, delegate, and collaborate seamlessly and more productively, allowing tasks and projects to be carried out faster.
Additionally, network assessments can help you determine if any of your equipment or software needs upgrading. Through historic reports collated by your monitoring software, you’re given insight into how your hardware has performed over time, and whether you need to scale up your current technology or replace it altogether.
Having up-to-date hardware and software also ensures that your system has the capability to run advanced security software needed to protect your corporate network from increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats.
3. Monitor large-scale, growing networks
The technological landscape is constantly changing, growing, and developing, with more devices connected than ever before. Collectively referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), physical devices all over the globe are now deeply linked in the online environment, sharing, collecting, and processing data.
In fact, connected devices have leapt from 7 billion in 2018 to a grand 26.6 billion in 2019, with installed IoT devices predicted to reach 31 billion by the end of 2020. While this innovation has improved the convenience and efficiency of everyday communication and activities, this widening network of online data also poses plenty of security risks and concerns.
Through continuous monitoring, however, IT administrators can easily keep tabs on multiple IT systems and endpoints. Network monitoring tools relieve the burden of unnecessary manual labor, creating automatic reports and sending instant alerts if potential risks, issues, and suspicious activity are identified.
These solutions can be incredibly helpful in facilitating cloud migration as more businesses shift their servers and data storage to the online sphere. Having reliable monitoring measures in place can ensure a smooth, confident transition despite significant network changes.
Keep your healthcare practice security scare-free this Halloween
Through Healthy IT’s managed IT services, we’ll ensure digital spooks are kept to a minimum. With 24/7 proactive maintenance and system monitoring, our experts are ready to optimize your technologies for faster performance, tighter security, and minimal downtime. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help boost your organization’s cybersecurity.
