What is network monitoring, and why do you need it?

Written by Sid Collis from Bold IT

The modern digital world and its ‘always-on’ approach have been a boon for businesses, allowing significant increases in productivity and helping boost how competitive businesses can be.

But with so many devices, applications and employees, not to mention so-called external ‘bad actors’, all interacting with your network at once, businesses really need to step up their cyber security game to keep things running smoothly.

That’s where network monitoring comes in.

If you leave things to chance regarding your network, your business is wide open to cyber attacks, service outages and even productivity-killing performance issues.

So, whether you’re running a small enterprise or are managing a large IT environment, understanding what network monitoring is and why it matters is essential.

What is network monitoring?

Network monitoring is the ongoing tracking, analysing and reporting on the security, health and performance of your IT network and as your network is running 24 hours a day, your network monitoring service should be too.

Good network monitoring allows you real-time visibility over your entire system, across devices, connections and applications and from servers and switches to firewalls and endpoints. It should cover everything.

Network monitoring allows your IT team or IT services company to detect developing faults, prevent outages and optimise traffic and bandwidth to respond rapidly to any signs of a cyber security incursion.

It eliminates issues that can arise from bottlenecks in your system, hardware failures and suspicious activity, both from inside and outside your company. We provide proven, proactive and robust network monitoring services to businesses of all sizes.

How does network monitoring work?

Network monitoring works by keeping an eye on how data moves between different devices and applications on your system.

Special software tools watch your network in real time and collect important data – things like how much bandwidth (internet capacity) is being used, how fast systems are running and whether any errors are cropping up.

This helps your IT team or a trusted IT services partner like Bold IT to spot early signs of any developing issues, such as a slow system, a failing device or a potential cyber threat.

With such powerful and thorough proactive oversight, many issues can be fixed before they even cause your business any disruption, and you and your team shouldn’t even notice there’s a problem at all.

We even take care of all the technical setup for you, integrating our monitoring tools directly into your infrastructure.

What are the benefits of network monitoring?

Well-implemented network monitoring solutions don’t just fix problems, they prevent them from happening in the first place.

By giving real-time insights into network performance, your business stays ahead of issues before they escalate.

You’ll enjoy near-perfect uptime, better system performance and less disruption, giving you more time to focus on the running of your business.

Common threats network monitoring can catch

Cyber security attack methods get smarter, faster and more targeted every day, and the rise of generative AI has only speeded cyber criminals up even more.

Fortunately, robust, proactive and constantly adapting network monitoring will help you catch:

• Malware infections: Sudden spikes in outbound traffic or connections to known malicious websites can be early signs of a system compromise.
• Insider threats: Not all data security threats come from outside your business. Unusual data access or movement between systems could indicate a breach from within.
• DDoS attacks: A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack can be flagged and blocked early if traffic is flooding your network from unknown sources, avoiding downtime.
• Unpatched vulnerabilities: Monitoring tools can detect outdated systems or devices that haven’t received security updates.
• Device Failures: Network monitoring tools can detect failing hardware, like overheating servers and overloaded routers, before they completely fail and cause downtime.

Our network monitoring specialists are ready to help. Use our online form to get in touch.