Monitoring the infrastructure is essential to any modern business’ IT infrastructure. It will help ensure that the systems you have in place function as intended and help you spot issues in the early stages to solve them quickly.
How do you tell the health of your infrastructure? What indicators should you be looking for? How can you keep track of different aspects of your network and servers?
This complete guide will help address these issues and much more!
What exactly is continuous monitoring in the field of cybersecurity?
Continuous monitoring refers to a security method that requires constant surveillance and evaluation of an organization’s IT infrastructure, system, and software to identify possible security risks and weaknesses. Continuous monitoring safeguards your security enterprise’s assets and warrants that the assets are safe from cyber-attacks that could be a threat.
Similar to alarm systems for homes that notify you when someone is near your property or when a smoke detector alarm goes off, a continuous monitoring process is created to check your IT environment continuously to identify potential risks and alert you of suspicious activities.
Continuous monitoring allows organizations to discover vulnerabilities and possible dangers before they are attacked, which is essential to managing vulnerabilities.
How Resource Monitors Can Be Exploited in Breaches
Unauthorized Access
One of the simplest ways that resource monitors could be misused is through unauthorized access. When hackers gain access to a resource monitor, they could alter the data that it accumulates or deactivate it to conceal their footprints. For example, if hackers infiltrate networks and take control of the monitoring system, it could block the alerts that relate to their actions and allow them to roam around the network.
Insider Threats
The threat of insiders poses a significant threat to resource monitors. Personnel or contractors who use these instruments may use them to aid in facilitating breaches. In the example above, an insider may employ a resource monitor to detect vulnerabilities in the system, exploit them, or even sell the information to attackers from outside.
What To Assess in a Network Monitoring Software Provider
The provider of your network monitoring software must provide a broad set of tools for collecting information, analyzing, and reacting to suspicious activity on your network. It must also unify the monitoring and management of your company’s IT assets and provide unlimited insight into their interactions with each other.
Complete alerting and report
Your network monitoring system should notify you about security issues and serve complete reports detailing these incidents in real-time. It must also include diverse instruments for capturing performance data, performing deep analysis, and producing the required compliance reports.
Future-proof scalability
Think about what security requirements your company will require in the years to come. If your monitoring tool isn’t scalable and suitable for your organization’s growth, you could be bound by a contract with a vendor who doesn’t meet your needs.
This is particularly true for companies that favour on-premises deployments, as you may have to pay for equipment and services that aren’t used in the first place. Cloud-based software solutions typically perform better in situations where flexibility is crucial.
What are the basic principles of obtaining information?
The basic principles of data gathering are keeping it simple, making a meticulous plan, gathering reliable information, and engaging relevant participants. Controlling quality is essential during the procedure.
What are the steps when gathering data?
The stages involved in gathering information consist of determining the purpose, deciding on ways to collect data, and analyzing and organizing the collected information. This provides a systematic and reliable method for gathering the necessary data.
What Are the Phases of Security Monitoring?
The ability to detect and respond to security monitoring can be divided into two main stages:
Acquisition and Analysis: This beginning phase involves collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data, logs, and other indicators indicating possible security risks. It observes traffic on network users’ behaviour, user habits, systems performance, and other relevant metrics. This analysis is designed to uncover specific patterns or actions that are different from usual and suggest the possibility of security breaches.
Responding to Risks: After finding possible threats, the security staff or system takes suitable measures to minimize the risk. This can be done automatically (blocking suspect IP accounts and users) or manually (conducting more investigation or tweaking security procedures).
Conclusion
Resource monitors are an essential element of modern security strategies. They help provide real-time information about the system’s performance, and by identifying suspicious activities and anomalies, they benefit businesses by recognizing and responding immediately to any potential security threats. Although they’re not free of difficulties, the continuous advancement of these instruments is likely to boost their efficiency and user-friendliness. Implementing resource monitors as an element of a larger security plan can dramatically increase an organization’s ability to guard its data and systems from hacks.
This article provides an in-depth overview of the significance and use of resource monitors in cybersecurity. Businesses can use the power of these tools to protect against data leaks and other cyber attacks by following excellent guidelines and staying up-to-date with the latest trends.