Why Network Monitoring Is Important for Your Business

Coronavirus pandemic has forced companies to embrace remote work. Thus, there is a sudden shift in the work practices. Companies also need to change the methods that they were using to protect their work. Organizations need to deal with complex modern networks. They also need to support remote employees at the same time. This is causing a lot of stress to IT security teams. Your corporate network is the most important thing for your business. You can’t do your daily operations until your network is working properly. Continuous network monitoring will help you in solving this issue. It will ensure that your network is working properly. In this network, we are going to talk about the importance of network monitoring.

What is Network Infrastructure?

Your network infrastructure will include things like software and hardware resources. It will include devices like your servers, firewalls, wifi, and switches. You need to carefully configure and maintain these devices.

Routers will help you in connecting your private corporate network with the internet. You can use switches for connecting all the devices in your networks like printers and computers. This will ensure that your devices can communicate with each other. Wi-fi access points will be required for providing wireless access to your users. A network firewall will protect your network from intruders. It will help you in controlling your outgoing and incoming traffic. You can store your data files, databases, and applications on your servers.

These are the main components of your network. You will also have tablets, phones, printers, and PCs. Network monitoring will help you in ensuring that your network is running efficiently.

What is Network Monitoring?

Network monitoring means that you are going to continuously monitor your network. This will help you in detecting and fixing performance issues in your network. In this, you are first going to collect network statistics. These stats will help you in determining the quality of your network. Continuous review and monitoring of your network will help you in fixing various vulnerabilities and bugs. You should continuously monitor your network hardware and software.

Network monitoring will help you in fading the root cause of problems. It will also prove that network is not the problem if something else is not working. Continuous network monitoring will help you in finding potential issues in your network. This will help you proactively solving problems before they occur. For example, network monitoring will help you in detecting and solving problems like network slowdown. These types of problems can affect your entire organization.

Identifying such network issues will help you in protecting your business reputation and it will help you in boosting your employee productivity. Your employees can do their work without worrying about network issues. This will also ensure that your customers will stay happy as they will always have access to your services.

The pandemic has forced most companies to embrace remote work. Thus, it is important to ensure that your business network is working properly. This will help you in delivering the best services to your employees. Remote network monitoring can help you in solving this problem. Continuous network monitoring will also help you with security issues.

Benefits of Network Monitoring 

Network monitoring will help you in troubleshooting and fixing issues. It will also help you in optimizing your network. You can use network metrics like packet reordering, latency, jitters, and throughput to check your network health. Proactive network monitoring will help you in ensuring business continuity. It will help you in avoiding or minimizing downtime. The main benefits of network monitoring are:

1. You can identify network issues

Network monitoring and assessment will help you quickly find problems in your network. It will also help you in finding the root cause of problems. You can check when the problem actually occurred. This will help you in quickly solving network issues. You can’t properly fix network issues until you are proactively monitoring your network. If you are properly monitoring your network, then you can easily detect any performance changes that might cause problems to your users.

2. Visibility

Network monitoring will ensure that your IT team has complete visibility of your network. They can check all your software and network assets. This is very important as it will help you in checking the health of your network. You can compare network monitoring with a visit to a doctor who will first look for danger signs. Network monitoring will also help you in finding red flags. It will track the data that is flowing in your network. You can check the entire data flow by monitoring your network. In case of a problem, you can easily find the cause of the problem. This will help you in quickly solving the problem.

3. Better network reliability

Network monitoring will help you in checking the health of your device. It will indicate whether your devices (router, databases, server, and router) are working properly. You don’t need to worry about fixing the device after it breaks down. A proactive network monitoring approach will help you in maintaining a healthy network. It will ensure that everything is working properly in your network. Thus, network monitoring will help you in reducing the number of downtime occurrences. Your devices will always work properly. If your network devices are not working properly, then you can easily track them and focus on fixing them.

4. Boost network performance

Your business and network are only going to grow with time. Thus, you will add new devices to your network. Also, you will increase the bandwidth of your network for coping up with demand. Network monitoring will help you in actively tracking your devices. It will ensure that you can check the status of your software applications and devices that your users are using. You should benchmark your current network performance. This will help you in setting goals for your network. You can use network monitoring for improving your network performance and eventually beating your competition.

5. Compliance

Compliance is very important for modern businesses. It is important to ensure that you are following the relevant regulatory compliance. If you are operating in the healthcare sector, then you need to follow HIPAA compliance. Similarly, if you are dealing with financial data, then you need to follow the PCI DSS compliance. GDPR compliance is compulsory for businesses that are dealing with EU citizen’s data.

Most networks are very complex in nature. Thus, it is difficult to ensure that you are following security compliance. Network monitoring will help you in solving this problem. The report generated by network monitoring tools will help you in evaluating your systems. This will ensure that you are delivering an efficient and secure service to your users. It will also help you in checking if you are following all the standards. Proactive network monitoring will also help you in stopping data breaches. This will help you in avoiding unnecessary fines and penalties.

6. Better use of resources

IT teams are already overworked due to the pandemic. More than 75% of IT professionals have taken new responsibilities after this pandemic. A network outage will kill your employee’s productivity. If your network is down, then your employees can’t complete their work.

Network monitoring systems will help you in ensuring that your network is healthy. It will also reduce the manual work. Your IT teams don’t need to worry about manually checking your network. They can directly use automated tools for monitoring your network. In case of a network outage, they can use these tools to quickly find problems in your network. Thus, they can quickly solve network problems. This will ensure that you can allocate your IT team to other important projects.

7. Providing baseline data

Baseline data will help your network monitoring tools in continuously comparing data. If your network performance is degrading, then it will send an alert to you. Baseline or historical data will give you very important comparison data points. It will also help you in using the past data to solve current network problems.

8. Manage changing, growing networks

IT environments are becoming massive in size. The rise of IoT devices is only going to accelerate this. You can now connect thousands of IoT devices with your network. This will help you in improving your employee’s efficiency. Also, it will help you in improving your customer experience. According to a report from Gartner, IoT devices will receive 25 billion by the end of this year. It is important to ensure that you are continuously monitoring your network for fluctuations.

Networks are also becoming more complex with time. You need access to reliable and flexible tools for monitoring your IP assets. This will ensure that your network is working optimally.

9. Identify network threats

Network monitoring can help you in protecting your applications and data from attackers. It is cost-effective when compared to other security tools like Intrusion detection software. Network monitoring tool reports will help you in determining the normal performance of your network. This will ensure that you can easily spot anomalies in your network performance. If there is an unfamiliar device in your network, then you can easily detect it. Your IT security team can use the reports generated by the network monitoring tool to check the health of your network. If something is wrong with your network, then you can start fixing your network. This proactive approach will help you in protecting your network from attackers.

Why network monitoring is important for your business?

Network failures will lead to downtime. Thus, your employees can’t do your work. If your customers are using your digital products, then they can’t access your applications. Due to this, you will lose your customers. This will result in huge losses. Your employees will also waste a lot of their items. More than 35% of SMBs have lost revenue due to downtime. Downtime can reduce your employee productivity by 21%.

Network monitoring can help you in reducing your downtime. This will help you in saving a lot of money as your customers will be happy. Your employees will always have access to their resources. This will ensure that they won’t lose productivity. Thus, network monitoring is very important for modern businesses.

How Network Monitoring is changing?

Network monitoring is also changing rapidly with time. There are various innovations in the industry. These innovations have changed the entire network monitoring industry. Some of the main innovations are:

• SDP Technology

Companies are using SDP or software defined-perimeter technology for protecting their networks. This will help you in embracing remote work. SDP technology will remove all your internet-connected devices from public visibility. This will reduce the attack surface. Thus, your network will become safer. If you are using SDP, then your users will have access to authorized applications only. This will help you in reducing threats from hacked devices. SDP technology is actually better when compared with VPN technology. Thus, you should consider using it for protecting your network.

• Secure Access Service Edge

SASE will help you in combining SD-WAN with network security services. This will provide secure access to your company resources to your employees. It will help you in connecting and securing your edge devices. SASE will first check the identity of your users. It will also check the real-time characteristics like the location and device of your users.

How Bleuwire can help your business?

Most SMBs don’t have access to a large IT team. Thus, they can’t monitor their network or cloud infrastructure. The best way to solve this problem is by working with a good MSP. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire will help you in monitoring your network. This will ensure that your network is protected from threats. They will help you in saving a lot of time and money by removing the cost of on-site network support. You don’t need to worry about hiring on-site network support employees for your business. Bleuwire will help you remotely monitor your network. In case of downtime, they will help you in quickly recovering your systems. Bleuwire will ensure that you have access to a secure and reliable network. If you need more information regarding network monitoring, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.