Why Network Monitoring Services are Important in Today’s Climate

Today’s working climate is different from what we’ve ever really experienced before. There is a huge increase in the amount of employees now working remotely due to the practice of social distancing, not to mention the incredible strain that has been placed on healthcare, distribution, and industrial organizations. Now, more than ever, we need proper measures in place in order to properly protect our businesses. The fact is, threats still exist; they are not taking a break during these times. We need to ensure that our most valuable assets are under watch and any issues can be resolved in the most efficient way possible. This is where network monitoring services can play a pivotal role.

Network monitoring is essential now more than ever

People are now depending more so on essential services to maintain a healthy and productive lifestyle. Food services, distribution of food and medical supplies, and especially the healthcare system itself, all need to be up and running effectively in order to bring the people what they need.

Your MSPs will be working that much harder to ensure that there are no outages or damaging threats to businesses who we rely on. Because the need is so great in these areas, we can’t afford to be lax in our monitoring awareness.

Risks in healthcare

Healthcare, and the services they provide, will be pushed to their limits during these coming months. With the influx of patients seeking treatment, the need for quick turnarounds with testing, the protection of sensitive data, and the sharing of information with the proper government organizations, their network needs to be functioning at full capacity.

Cyberattackers are always looking out for the easiest targets to launch their ransomware attacks on. In these times, unfortunately healthcare organizations will fall into this category. Ransomware operators have found it increasingly easy to take advantage of network devices like gateway and virtual private network appliances. Attackers will aim to exploit these devices and once they’re in, they will steal credentials, elevate their privileges, and continue to install ransomware and other malware into the network.

Too often these attacks will go undetected. However, with the right monitoring service in place the attacks can be identified and stopped before any damage is done. It goes without saying that our healthcare professionals have their work cut out for them during these trying times. Network monitoring services are in place to take the unnecessary added roadblocks out of the picture.

Pressure on industrial organizations

With traditional in-store purchasing seeing a dramatic decrease along with the equally dramatic increase of delivery services, the need for constant network connectivity has never been more important. People are now relying on their goods being delivered. This includes things like food and sanitary products, not to mention the pharmaceuticals that hospitals need delivered. All of these services rely on connectivity and networks being carefully monitored for threats and outages. Without these services, we wouldn’t have access to all of the essentials.

With the increased demand for these items, comes increased traffic through the networks supporting them. All of the increased traffic inevitably will bog down servers and create more vulnerabilities. We need to be constantly watching out for these issues to stay on top of them. The most important aspect of these network monitoring services is resolving things before they become too damaging.

Rapidly evolving remote work

With the practice of social distancing comes the reality of remote working for a lot of businesses. This unfortunately does not mean the end of network threats and outages. Actually, it means that there will be more of an emphasis on workarounds for these issues. Cyber threats are still active and will continue to look for those vulnerabilities in systems. With the increased pressure on our networks, comes more chance for outages to servers.

A lot of people are seeing their normal working hours fluctuate throughout the day and week while working remotely. Sometimes employees are working later into the evening than they normally would be. This could pose a problem if you have an issue that presents itself during these late hours.

For example, an employee may come across a seemingly normal email late on a Friday night. This email turns out to be a ransomware attack that would have the entire weekend to infiltrate and affect your network before you become aware of the issue on Monday morning. With network monitoring, this issue would be recognized, identified, and resolved before ever getting a chance to affect your systems. Monday morning you would start your day without even knowing there was an issue at all.

Maintaining health and safety

The luxuries that network monitoring provides makes it easier to deter people from coming into the office, limiting the amount of physical contact between employees. Feeling confident that your business is being monitored means you can be sure your employees are in a position to conduct business as usual even from their homes. During these times we need to remain cautious and promote the health and safety of our workforce. Using network monitoring services means you can do this while still allowing your business to flourish.

Don’t wait to keep yourself and your networks safe

It’s important to get ahead of the issues we’re facing today. Whether we’re talking about staying home and away from others for prevention or keeping an eye out for our network to prevent any unnecessary downtime. Don’t wait until it’s too late to protect these things, get ahead of the issues and keep yourself, your employees, and your networks safe. At Valeo Networks, we offer all cyber security and managed IT services including 24/7 network monitoring. By partnering with Valeo, you can be confident in running your business successfully, even in these trying times we find ourselves in today. Contact our team to request a free assessment and IT roadmap today.