What Is Network Monitoring And Its Importance by Smruti Ranjan Sarangi

Network monitoring is the act of recording all computer and Internet activity that occurs on the PC's in your network. By this you can virtually record EVERYTHING anyone does on your network. By different features of monitoring user can even view activities of a single user across multiple PC's. This is great if users have access to multiple computes throughout the network. You can view all reports from that user for all the computers they were accessing and using. By Network-Monitoring Software you can monitor your network. In this you can record emails, keystrokes, websites, usernames, passwords, screenshots, chat messages, instant messages, applications ran, and more. All of this comes with date, time, and the length of time it was accessed.

What are the benefits from Network Monitoring?

The benefits are limitless - monitoring your network can ONLY be beneficial to yourself and your company. See some common reasons that explain how priceless monitoring can be.

1- Conduct investigation on employees suspected of abuse

Have a problem with employees using the Internet inappropriately? You are in the same boat as every other company. It is becoming an increasing problem each and every year - employees abusing their Internet privileges by chatting with friends, conducting online stock trades, shopping while on the clock, and much more. This all boils down to loss of productivity and decreased profits for your company and institution.

2- Increase employee productivity and increase PROFITS!

By monitoring your employees you will drastically increase the productivity of your employees. Increased productivity equals increased profits for your company. It is estimated that approximately 75 minutes every day is used for non-business related activity on company computers for EACH employee. This translated into an annual loss of $6,250 per employee in revenue assuming your employees are paid the U.S. average of $20 per hour. Imagine if your employees salary is higher!

3- Eliminate leaking of confidential material

The greatest assets in your company is the data contained within it. Protect your confidential data from leaking to third-parties through monitoring your computers activity across the network.

4- Recover important communications that have been lost

By monitoring your networks important data and communication it is always logged. Imagine if an employee's work was lost due to a power outage, a problem with the PC, or plain employee mistake - now it will always be logged and can always be retrieved safely and in its entirety.

5- Meet or exceed federal, industry, or agency compliance requirements for keeping records of transactions and communications

6- By monitoring your PC's you are meeting the industry requirements for keeping records and logs of transactions and communications all with the additional benefits listed above. Why wouldn't you monitor them!?

TOOL TO MONITOR NETWORK

There are many types of tools, devices, instruments and softwares available in market for network monitor. Monitoring tools help you monitor your network performance and highlight and discrepancies that might point to underlying malicious activity. Network monitoring tools can help you keep an eye on your network activity so that you can detect bizarre activity or log information to look at to find problems when they arise.

SOFTWARE TO MONITOR NETWORK

Why we need software to monitor Network?

Does your network seem slow at times but you are not sure why? If you experience issues with your network? Then you may want to look into a Network Monitoring(NM) software solution.

NM software can be helpful when trying to troubleshoot network related issues, watching your network equipment, and providing performance analysis. NM software is a must have if you are a network administrator. NM software can allow you to oversee a single network device or all your network devices. If you have several network devices then NM software may be what you need.

What is NM Software?

Network monitoring software is designed to help you oversee local area networks, wide area networks, metropolitan area networks, and all network equipment components. With NM software set up, you'll be able to get alerts when network equipment fails, oversee performance of network equipment, track and troubleshoot network related issues, provide reports about the network and equipment, and much more.

Network Monitoring(NM) Software Benefits

Depending on your business needs and the NM software, you can expect to gain several benefits from using NM software in your environment. Some of the benefits are:

1- Network monitoring can help in achieving an SLA agreement 2- Get timely notices when failures occurs 3- Allows you to oversee the health of your network equipment 4- Manage your entire network from a central location 5- Provides graphical, customized, and real-time reporting of your network 6- Reduce unnecessary down time

These are just several benefits that may be achieved by setting up NM software for your business. Since there are several software packages available to monitor network, it is always a good ideal to make sure you have determined your network monitoring needs before choosing a NM software solution.

How a NM software being used?

Check out some situations in which a network monitoring software can be use to monitor the network.

1- Business Monitoring

NM software can be deployed over a business network in seconds and allow for easy centralized log viewing via one central networked PC. All the network administrator has to do is point and click different users to view their activities! No physical presence is needed to monitor employees! Now network administrators can monitor large networks from one convenient, secure location! Network monitoring software is a scalable solution - so any network, from a small workgroup, to a large corporate structure, can be monitored by Network monitoring software.

2- Institutional Monitoring

Network Monitoring Software can be used in schools and institutions to monitor the use of their public lab workstations. All workstations can be monitored from a central location to ensure they are being used properly and not being misused by other users that are coming and going! Multiple rooms and networks can be monitored by one user from any location for convenient real-time monitoring.

3- Centralized Administration

Network monitoring software can be used to control PC's over a network from a central location. Administrators can shutdown, logoff, reboot, freeze, or send a message to any user, or all users, on a network. Network monitoring software can also be used to view each user remotely, in real-time.

4- Prevent Security Breaches

Network monitoring software allows administrators to carefully monitor their user's activities - ensuring they do not open any security holes in their network, or divulge any sensitive information to third parties. In the case that information has been divulged, the administrator can easily view network monitoring software's stored activity logs for incriminating data for nabbing the guilty party - and closing the source of the information leak.

About the Author: Smruti Ranjan Sarangi has authored many articles on a diversified topics like Technical, Management, and Humanity. For information on Network Monitoring, Internet Monitoring etc. visit www.MonitorDealer.com Source of this article: www.goarticles.com