The Top 10 Network Monitoring And Management Software
Discover the top network management software solutions with features like network mapping, visualization and automatic device discovery.
Written by Caitlin Harris
Technical Review by Laura Iannini
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Atera
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Auvik Network Manager
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Catchpoint Network Experience
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Datadog Network Monitoring
One of the biggest challenges for IT teams isn’t just keeping the network running, it’s keeping it running effectively. In the face of cyber adversaries attempting to breach the network to steal or corrupt data, and accidental damage caused by misconfigurations, it can be very difficult to manage a network manually. That’s where network monitoring and management software comes in.
Network monitoring is the process of monitoring the network for slow, failing, or damaged assets. These solutions make sure an admin is aware of each issue and has the capacity to remediate it. This may seem like a simple task, but it can quickly become overwhelming as a network grows – the more devices, applications, and services on a network, the more complex it is to monitor and manage. Network monitoring and management tools take care of this for you by automating some of the more time-consuming processes involved in network monitoring, such as device discovery and asset mapping. This leaves your IT team with more time to spend on responding to alerts and ensuring that the network is running as efficiently and securely as possible.
There are two main ways in which network monitoring tools can work: they’re either agent-based, or agentless. Agent-based tools usually deliver most of the software (i.e., the management features) as-a-Service, which can be accessed via a web-based interface. You then just need to install the monitoring agent on each device on your network, and the software will report back telemetry from that device to your web-based interface. Agentless tools are often installed on-premises. They don’t require you to install an agent on each device in order to monitor them; they just need the access credentials for those devices. While this saves time on implementation, it also generally requires more resource to run than an agent-based system.
In this article, we’ll explore the top network monitoring and management software. We’ll look at features such as network mapping and visualization, automatic device discovery, and reporting and analytics. We’ll give you some background information on the provider and the key features of each solution, as well as the type of customer that they are most suitable for.
Headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany, Paessler is an IT software provider that specializes in IT and IoT monitoring. PRTG is their IT infrastructure monitoring platform, which offers cloud-based monitoring for SMBs and on-prem monitoring for organizations of all sizes operating a Windows network.
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor Features:
- Monitors the entire network—including systems, devices, traffic, and applications—using simple network management protocol, Windows Management Instrumentation, packet sniffing, and SSH, with support for Ping, SNMP, WMI, HTTP requests and flow protocols
- Support for distributed networks, with the ability to monitor an unlimited number of remote locations
- Automatically discovers all network devices and creates sensors for them
- Real-time topography maps visualize the network and display live status information for network assets
- Customizable report templates and dashboards ensure IT teams can access the information they need immediately
- Alerting on network issues and anomalous metrics via email, push notification, and HTTP request, with the option to set custom thresholds for alerting
- Web interface, desktop app, and mobile apps for iOS and Android
Pricing And Plan: Paessler PRTG is available via three versions. PRTG Network Monitor starts at €1,649/license and supports small- to mid-sized companies. PRTG Enterprise Monitor starts at €15,249/year and supports larger enterprises. Paessler also offers a freeware version of PRTG that includes all features and up to 100 monitoring sensors (PRTG Network Monitor Offers up to 10,000 sensors).
Expert Insights’ Comments: Paessler PRTG is a highly flexible platform, able to host on-prem or in the cloud and monitor a local network or a distributed network across multiple remote locations. Its flexible pricing plans and ease of management make this solution suitable for organizations of all sizes, and its range of management interfaces makes PRTG accessible to both on-prem and remote IT teams.
Atera
Atera is an IT monitoring and management provider headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. Their lightweight, cloud-based platform combines remote network discovery, remote management, professional services automation (PSA), remote access, patch management, and help desk services. These tools enable IT teams to streamline their network management processes and reduce strain on resources, while proactively remediating issues.
Atera Features:
- Compatible with Windows, MacOS, Linux, and SNMP devices
- Continuous network scanning maps all assets (including ports) across Workgroup and Domain controller networks, highlighting the presence of any unauthorized devices and making it easier to identify vulnerabilities, e.g., missing patches or security software
- Automatic notifications alert IT teams to changes across the network for faster investigation
- Active Directory integration enables IT teams to monitor device and user information across specific domains or subdomains
- Workgroup scanning provides data on all assets across a LAN
- Automation of IT maintenance and administrative tasks such as system scans, reboots, update checks, and patching, free up IT resource to focus on more complex issues
- Dynamic reporting and activity logging provide a real-time picture of the entire network for security and auditing
Pricing And Plans: Atera for IT teams is available via four packages. Professional ($149/month/technician) is suitable for individuals that need to manage a small network. This package doesn’t include automatic network discovery. Expert ($169) is suitable for small teams managing a network with multiple device types. Master ($199) is suitable for large teams looking for automatic troubleshooting and remediation. Enterprise pricing is available from Atera on request. These prices reflect an annual subscription – monthly subscriptions are more expensive.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Atera is designed to be a “one stop shop” for IT teams and MSPs. It offers lots of functionality besides the network monitoring features listed above, such as multi-tenancy, an in-built helpdesk system, and PSA tools. This makes it a strong solution for an IT team looking to unify their network and asset management processes. However, because network discovery isn’t available in the Professional package, we recommend Atera as a strong network monitoring tool for IT teams managing mid-size to larger networks.
Atera
Auvik Network Manager
Headquartered in Ontario, Canada, Auvik is a provider of cloud-based network and application management software. Auvik’s Network Manager solution provides many of out-of-the-box features designed to help IT teams identify issues across their network before they develop into more complex security or performance problems. Auvik is available for IT teams and MSPs alike and is trusted on over 70,000 networks globally.
Auvik Features:
- Automatic network scanning creates a continuous, real-time inventory of all IT assets, including make, model, serial number, IP address, and physical switchport details
- Intelligent search and filtering enable IT teams to locate data on a specific VLAN or device for faster investigation
- Comes with 50 pre-configured alerts, which admins can adjust and choose how often they want to be notified for them; admins can also create custom alerts
- Centralized syslog for faster troubleshooting
- Automatic backups of network device configurations ensure configurations can be restored quickly or exported to a new device in the event a device stops working
- Network traffic analysis offers insights into which users are accessing the network and where their traffic is flowing to help identify malicious behavior and which devices and apps are using the most bandwidth
Pricing And Plans: Auvik is available via two packages: Essentials and Performance. Both packages offer network discovery, mapping and monitoring, remote management, global dashboards, and API integrations for an unlimited number of users, network sites, and endpoints. Performance also offers network flow monitoring, ML-powered application visibility, IP tracking, syslog collection and search, and troubleshooting dashboards. Pricing is available upon request from Auvik.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Auvik’s strong automation capabilities and out-of-the-box alerts make it a great network management tool for small- to mid-size organizations looking for a reliable, yet easy to manage solution.
Auvik Network Manager
Catchpoint Network Experience
Catchpoint Systems is a digital observability provider headquartered in New York, US, which focuses on network performance monitoring and optimization. Their Network Experience monitoring solution enables IT teams to obtain complete visibility over the third-party services they rely on for their business to operate. The solution helps IT teams identify and remediate issues along their service delivery chain, so they can improve user experience for both employees and customers.
Catchpoint Network Experience Features:
- Real-time network diagnostics help IT teams to quickly identify and troubleshoot the root cause of any issues
- Centralized dashboard provides visual insights into the performance of third-party services, including CDN setups, DNS, BGP issues, and Wi-Fi networks
- Data visualization through charts and graphs make it easier to monitor live and historical network performance and identify current issues or long-term trends
- Traffic shaping and analysis of users’ network paths helps prioritize incident response so that users are impacted as little as possible
- Vendor management tools track ISP, ingress, and egress performance to help identify and continuously verify the top-performing vendors for each party of the service delivery chain
Pricing And Plans: Pricing for Catchpoint’s Network Experience solution is available from Catchpoint upon request.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Catchpoint enables businesses to proactively identify and remediate issues in their digital service delivery chain before those issues can impact their users. The platform is available globally, and its visual dashboards enable IT teams to quickly scan large amounts of data to identify issues or trends. Overall, we recommend Catchpoint Network Experience as a strong network monitoring tool for larger enterprises that rely on delivering SaaS apps and other third-party services to their users and need to ensure those services are delivered optimally.
Catchpoint Network Experience
Datadog Network Monitoring
Headquartered in New York, US, Datadog is an observability provider that gives organizations visibility into their cloud applications, servers, databases, and services. Datadog offers two network monitoring and management solutions: Network Performance Monitoring (NPM) provides insights into application, infrastructure, and DNS performance for more efficient troubleshooting; Network Device Monitoring (NDM) provides insights into the health and performance of bare-metal devices on the network, including firewalls, routers, and switches.
Datadog Network Monitoring Features:
- Traffic analysis highlights where traffic is flowing across endpoints, on-premises servers, cloud apps, and containers to help identify communication issues and potential malicious behaviors, such as unusual spikes in traffic
- DNS analysis gives admins visibility into server health, with reporting on request volume, response times, and error codes
- Reporting on communication status between cloud resources, including metrics such as latency and TCP retransmits
- Automatically discovers new devices on networks and subnetworks and monitors their health status
- Granular reporting into device health via an intuitive, visual interface
- ML-driven insights help forecast bandwidth usage so IT teams can mitigate potential issues before they happen
Pricing And Plans: Datadog NPM starts at $5/host/month when billed annually, or at $7.20 on demand. NDM starts at $7/device/month when billed annually, or at $10.20 on demand.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Datadog’s network monitoring solutions offer comprehensive visibility into the health and performance status of all network assets, and the traffic flows between those assets. NPM and NDM can be purchased as standalone solutions, together, or in combination with Datadog’s other infrastructure services for added security, auditing, and logging. The platform is easy to navigate and offers a clear, visual overview of the network. As such, we recommend Datadog as a strong network monitoring tool for both SMBs and larger enterprises.
Datadog Network Monitoring
LogicMonitor Envision
LogicMonitor is a network monitoring and observability provider based in California, US. Their cloud-based platform enables MSPs and enterprises to obtain visibility into their network infrastructure and application stacks. LogicMonitor’s Envision network monitoring tool is available as part of the wider LogicMonitor platform. It supports network monitoring across on-premises, cloud environments, and data centers, so that businesses can improve their security and efficiency regardless of how their networks are built.
LogicMonitor Envision Features:
- Agentless network monitoring via SNMP, jFlow, NetFlow, sFlow, WMI, NBAR2, and/or IPFIX, with support for SD-WAN and cloud-based networks
- Monitoring for network devices, including firewalls, routers, switches, and wireless devices, helps reduce visibility gaps
- Automatically detects new devices on the network with the help of 2,500+ pre-configured integrations
- Network topography maps visualize the network, including traffic flows, enabling IT teams to contextualize alerts at a glance and easily identify root causes
- Machine learning-driven forecasting indicates whether network assets are performing as expected, helping teams identify performance and security issues
- OSI/IEC 27001 and SOC2 Type II certified
- 24/7 support
Pricing And Plans: The LogicMonitor platform is available via two packages, Pro and Enterprise. Both plans include LogicMonitor’s network monitoring features, but Enterprise adds on application performance monitoring and configuration monitoring. Pricing for both plans is available from LogicMonitor on request.
Expert Insights’ Comments: While LogicMonitor’s ease of configuration and wide range of out-of-the-box integrations make it accessible to smaller businesses, they may not make use of all the features offered by the wider LogicMonitor platform. As such, we recommend LogicMonitor as a strong network monitoring and management tool for MSPs and larger enterprises looking for a way to detect issues across their networks (or clients’ networks), including their application stack.
LogicMonitor Envision
ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine, a subsidiary of Zoho Corporation, is a leading IT management software provider headquartered in California, US. Trusted by 9 out of 10 of Fortune 100 companies, ManageEngine’s solution enables enterprises and MSPs to optimize and integrate their IT process so they’re easier to manage. OpManager is ManageEngine’s network monitoring software, which provides in-depth analysis of network and connected device performance.
ManageEngine OpManager Features:
- In-depth, real-time health, availability, and performance reporting on all IP-based devices connected to the network, including storage devices, printers, servers, routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless LAN controllers
- 24/7 monitoring for Hyper-V, VMWare, Citrix, Xen, and Nutanix HCI servers
- Remote probes with probe-specific controls enable IT teams to monitor distributed networks across multiple locations, all via one console
- Network visualization, including topography mapping, enables IT teams to easily identify issues for faster remediation
- Fault management tools help deliver meaningful, prioritized alerts to IT admins, with raw event correlation and unwanted event filtering
Pricing And Plans: OpManager is available via three packages. Standard starts at $245 for 10 devices and offers network device monitoring, physical server monitoring, alerting, custom dashboards, and business views. Professional ($345 for 10 devices) adds on virtual server monitoring, hardware monitoring, workflow automation, and 3D rack views. Enterprise ($11,545 for 250 devices) adds on distributed network monitoring and high availability.
Expert Insights’ Comments: OpManager is a robust network monitoring and management tool that’s easy to manage via its highly intuitive, visual interface. We recommend OpManager for mid-size and large enterprises looking to monitor their network performance, troubleshoot issues and bottlenecks, and ensure the health of their network devices. For MSPs, ManageEngine also offers OpManagerMSP, which offers multi-tenant support, customer-based grouping, and customer dashboards.
ManageEngine OpManager
Progress WhatsUp Gold
Based in Massachusetts, US, Progress Software is a technology provider that offers a broad range of data connectivity, infrastructure management, and digital experience software designed to help businesses build and maintain a secure, optimized infrastructure. WhatsUp Gold is their network monitoring and management software for on-prem and cloud environments, which enables IT teams to improve network performance and identify and remediate network issues before they reach the end user.
Progress WhatsUp Gold Features:
- Network monitoring identifies all network devices, including servers, storage, cloud devices, virtual and wireless devices, and routers
- Application monitoring and reporting offers insights into performance and response times, with analysis of bandwidth use to help highlight potential malicious connections
- Interactive topology mapping visualizes the relationships and dependencies between network assets
- Real-time alerts notify admins of any issues
- Centralized reporting enables admins to easily access network monitoring reports at a device level
- Automatic configuration backups ensure configurations can be restored quickly and easily in the event a device stops working
- Integrated log management enables admins to filter, search, and alert on syslogs or Windows logs for all connected devices, and archive logs to any storage location for unlimited retention periods to comply with regulatory standards
Pricing And Plans: WhatsUp Gold is available via three packages. Free is available on a 12-month renewable or perpetual license, with point-based licensing. Premium is available either as an annual subscription or perpetual license, with device-based licensing. Total Plus is available on a perpetual license, with points-based licensing. Pricing for each package is available via Progress’ website on request.
Expert Insights’ Comments: One of WhatsUp Gold’s key strengths is the interactivity and graphical visualization offered by its reporting dashboards. The platform enables admins to identify network issues at a glance, and the drag-and-drop dashboard interface is easy to navigate. We recommend WhatsUp Gold as a strong solution for mid-sized organizations that want to monitor and map their network assets, and the dependencies of those assets.
Progress WhatsUp Gold
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds is a leading IT software vendor headquartered in Texas, US. SolarWinds specializes in cybersecurity, IT service management, and observability solutions, and offers various network management and monitoring tools that integrate seamlessly with one another to provide a unified, holistic overview of an organization’s network. Network Performance Monitor covers on-prem and cloud network availability then alerts admins to any network issues for faster remediation and to help optimize performance.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Features:
- Network visualization maps automatically detect and map all the devices on the network and their dependencies
- Single-page path analysis shows IT teams all devices, applications, vendors, and networks to help isolate performance issues more quickly
- IT teams can create alerts based on simple or complex nested trigger conditions to ensure they’re receiving critical notifications while helping to reduce alert fatigue
- Support for Microsoft Azure cloud environments and private clouds with Cisco ACI monitoring and troubleshooting
Pricing And Plans: Pricing for SolarWinds’ Network Performance Monitor starts at £1,354, with subscription and perpetual licensing options available.
Expert Insights; Comments: SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is robust, yet easy-to-use network monitoring tool that helps IT teams identify and troubleshoot network performance issues across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid network services. We recommend SolarWinds’ solution as a strong network monitoring tool for mid-sized to large enterprises.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
Zabbix
Headquartered in Riga, Latvia, Zabbix is an open-source monitoring and alerting platform that tracks the performance and availability of network devices, services, servers, and other assets. Zabbix offers enterprise-level network monitoring with features such as high availability, support for on-prem and cloud networks, and distributed monitoring. As it is an open-source tool, it’s completely free to use.
Zabbix Features:
- Performance monitoring of a wide range of out-of-the-box metrics and incidents, including performance metrics (e.g., bandwidth usage, system state), health metrics (e.g., device temperature, critical system status), and configuration changes (e.g., new device added, firmware upgraded)
- Performance metrics can be customized by adding new items, writing custom data collection scripts, and building templates from scratch
- Auto-discovery of network devices and configuration changes
- Out-of-the-box templates for popular devices such as Cisco and Dell enable robust device monitoring, with pre-configured triggers, graphs, applications, screens, and discovery rules for each template
- Support for SNMP, IPMI, IPv6 and active/passive metric collection methods and protocols
- Proactive monitoring enables IT teams to predict network downtimes and bandwidth usage so they can more effectively identify anomalies in their network load
- Support for LDAP authentication and encryption of all monitoring traffic between Zabbix and network devices help to ensure the security of monitoring data
Pricing And Plans: Zabbix is free for commercial and non-commercial use, with an unlimited numbered of monitored devices.
Expert Insights’ Comments: On top of their network monitoring software, Zabbix also offers a range of consultancy services, technical support options, and professional training. We recommend Zabbix as a strong network monitoring and management solution for small-to mid-sized organizations looking for a scalable, high-availability tool that will help them identify and remediate network performance issues.
Zabbix
Network Monitoring And Management: Everything You Need To Know (FAQs)
What Is Network Monitoring And Management?
Network monitoring is the process of monitoring and managing a network—that could be a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), or internet network—and troubleshooting any performance, health, or security issues that arise whilst monitoring. Monitoring your network manually is a time-consuming task, with lots of room for human error, especially if you have a large or geographically distributed network made up of lots of different components, such as servers, devices, and applications. If this sounds like your network, we recommend that you implement a network monitoring and management tool to take care of the heavy work for you.
On top of carrying out network scans to detect and map your assets for you, network monitoring and management tools will analyze your network data and alert you to any abnormalities that may indicate something isn’t performing well, or that there’s been a breach. This can help you ensure the reliability and security of your network, whilst ensuring you’re complying with any necessary data protection regulations.
How Do Network Monitoring And Management Solutions Work?
At a high level, network monitoring and management tools make a record of all activities and changes that occur at a particular location. This information can then be assessed and feedback to relevant stakeholders. Network monitoring and management tools can, however, get much more granular than this broad overview.
Depending on how your network management tool is set up – and what part of your network it is designed to monitor – there is a great deal of flexibility within how these management tools work. Regardless of specific deployment, network monitoring and management tools will all gather network data, perform some form of analysis on it, then inform relevant users of the findings.
There are two predominant network monitoring protocols that will be used to carry out monitoring.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) – this operates at the application layer and uses a call-and-response system to monitor the status of various processes. This system can monitor a broad range of devices and can detect status and configuration details.
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) – this protocol is used for network devices like routers and servers. It can monitor IP-operations information to identify if messages are reaching their intended destination. Because of this, the protocol is often used to monitor errors as it can only identify success or failure.
Depending on what aspects of your network you want to monitor, admins can configure the management solution to monitor specific devices and endpoints. At this stage, the monitoring interval (how often you are logging status) and the degree of detail can also be decided.
Network monitoring and management tools will gather detailed information from these endpoints, giving admins extensive visibility into network status and operations. Admins are also given granular configurability into network processes, allowing them to ensure that all operations are functioning optimally.
Depending on the type of management solution, deployment and configuration will be different. For instance, some solutions will require an agent to be installed on endpoints in order to monitor and report findings. Other solutions will function as an application and integrate with data sources across your network. Certificate management solutions tend to operate in this way.
What Do Network Monitoring And Management Cover?
Network monitoring solutions can cover a wide range of areas, with specific solutions focused on protected specified network areas. Some – like configuration management tools – are focused on your initial period of onboarding and setup, while others – Security incident response solutions – will provide vital information regarding how to remediate and respond to a cyber issue.
Some tools will focus specifically on a network area or type of tool – one example of this might be certificate management or LAN monitoring tools. In contrast, there are solutions on the market that are designed to provide broad (yet accurate) intelligence across your entire network – infrastructure monitoring solutions would fall under this header.
What Are The Benefits Of Network Monitoring And Management Solutions?
While the primary benefit of Network Monitoring and Management solutions is enhanced visibility, it is worth taking a moment to explore the significance and the impact of this.
- Gain Network Visibility: Allows admins to improve their understanding of endpoints across the network, particularly any errors or misconfigurations. This information is both extensive and detailed, ensuring that admins have a comprehensive understanding, allowing them to make alterations where necessary.
- Reducing Resource Usage: By implementing an intelligent and effective solution to identify network errors and discrepancies, admins are able to make better use of their time. Rather than devoting hours to manually processing “normal” logs, the networking monitoring solution can do this and alert them to anything of note. This allows admins to understand how information flows around a network. Admins can then ensure that that each process is working effectively and that there processes are as optimised as possible.
- Insight Into Infrastructure Needs: As well as ensuring that there is sufficient capacity within a network, network monitoring puts you in a better position to respond and plan how your organization will scale in time. Though gaining deeper visibility, organizations can take preventative steps to avoid network outages, thereby reducing the chance of business disruption and affecting employee productivity.
- Identify Security Threats Faster: Gain insight into “normal” performance to highlight anomalies or unusual activity that could indicate an attack or a system failure.
What Features Should Network Monitoring And Management Tools Include?
While specific deployment and configuration may differ depending on usage, there are several critical features designed to make network monitoring and management clear and effective. These include:
- Real-time performance metrics: Network monitoring tools should monitor your network continuously and report these findings back to you in real-time. If a tool is unable to notify relevant users in a timely manner, its insights will not be as relevant as they can be.
- Automatic device discovery: Network monitoring tools need extensive and comprehensive access to devices across your entire network. If even a single device or endpoint is overlooked, the platform’s ability to provide valuable intelligence will be hampered. Automatic device discovery allows you to gain insights into your entire network, without the worry of missing anything. Platforms should offer support for a variety of devices and OS.
- Comprehensive Visibility: Linked into this idea is the requirement for your solution to have comprehensive access to all aspects of your network. Unless a solutions has comprehensive visibility into your network, it will be unable to properly track and manage the flow of information. You should ensure that your tool is compatible with all of your third-party tools and applications.
- Intelligent alerts: Alerts and notifications should be timely and actionable. They should provide relevant information, alongside sufficient contextual information matching your use cases. In some instances, you will want notifications to be delivered to specific users, rather than broadcast to all. Targeted notifications ensure that admins are only given information that is relevant to them.
- Issue diagnosis and root cause analysis: This is linked to the idea of accurate and relevant alerts. Network monitoring and management solutions should not only detect when something needs addressing but be capable of accurately identifying what and how the issue has occurred. This saves valuable human time, ensuring that issues can be resolved in a timely manner.
- Network maps: To ensure that admins and network owners understand the nature of an event, network monitoring and management tools should have clear diagrams and graphs to convey key details regarding the event. It should be possible to export these graphs and maps to inform relevant users and stakeholders.
- Customizable dashboards: Not only should your solution use a range of graphs and visualizations to convey information, but the platform should also have customizable dashboards that allow you to highlight relevant information. As network monitoring can cover such a broad range of data, ensuring you can configure the platform to suit your unique needs is essential.
- Scalability: Networks are constantly evolving and shifting as new endpoints are added, new users join, and software updates alter work processes. Unless your solution can automatically adapt to incorporate new areas, maintaining comprehensive coverage will become an almost impossible task. This feature links to automatic device discovery features.
- Configurability: To ensure your solution is optimized and running effectively, you want to ensure that the platform can be configured to focus on the information that you need. This might include setting threasholds so that data is only logged when metrics go outside of normal limits. Equally, you should be able to adjust monitoring frequency and what data is monitored to avoid unnecessary data being logged.
It is worth taking the time to consider what you want to get from a solution before selecting one. For instance, a cybersecurity risk management solution will provide different intelligence, with different use cases, to a server monitoring software solution.
How Do You Ensure That Monitoring Is Effective?
Network monitoring is a (potentially) limitless exercise. For the information gained to be usable, it is worth making a plan for how your solution will operate. This means that you can focus on relevant information and ignore data that does not meet specific thresholds. If you try to monitor your network at too frequent an interval, or with contextual information that isn’t directly relevant, you will be using valuable resource which could cause ‘alert fatigue’ and genuine issues to be missed.
Other factors to keep in mind when configuring a network monitoring and management solution include:
Monitoring the essentials
Instead of logging every single cyber event at every possible interval, admins can configure monitoring processes to focus on the specific risks and vulnerabilities facing their network. Rather than keeping tabs on every possible data point, it is helpful to be selective and focus on information that you will actually use.
For example, it might not be necessary to monitor IOC devices or office equipment like photocopiers in the same way that routers are monitored. While IOC devices do pose a risk, their risk is relatively low in comparison. With a photocopier, for example, it may only be worth monitoring operational success/failure, rather than a comprehensive log of what user photocopied what, and when. A printer outage or failure will not affect your organization’s ability to function, whereas a server or router failure might.
Before configuring your monitoring and management solution, it is worth conducting an inventory of your assets and their relative risk.
Optimizing monitoring interval
Following on with the idea of relative risk, you can adjust the frequency that your monitoring solution scans the network. As before, there will be network assets that are deemed lower risk, and therefore don’t need to be monitored quite so frequently.
By adjusting the interval that assets are monitored, you can effectively reduce overall workload, without impacting your level of security. This also reduces information noise – your admins and security teams can spend more time focusing on the most serious issues, rather than sifting through large amounts of data to find anomalies.
Selecting the relevant protocol and configuration settings
Once you know what you are looking for, you can choose the best ways of finding that information. This includes selecting the best network protocol such as SNMP or ICMP, as discussed earlier in the article. It tends to be best to use an out-of-band channel for monitoring, this way, usual network performance is unaffected.
Setting thresholds
In a similar way that you can focus on what network areas to monitor, you can also regulate when the platform begins to log details. Rather than logging and reporting on every event that occurs on a network, it can be effective to only log events that exceed a predetermined limit. This reduces overall workload, freeing up resource and time. Rather than having specific records of operations running normally, you can focus on abnormal or extreme events that really need your attention.
Written By
Caitlin Harris is Deputy Head of Content at Expert Insights. Caitlin is an experienced writer and journalist, with years of experience producing award-winning technical training materials and journalistic content. Caitlin holds a First Class BA in English Literature and German, and provides our content team with strategic editorial guidance as well as carrying out detailed research to create articles that are accurate, engaging and relevant. Caitlin co-hosts the Expert Insights Podcast, where she interviews world-leading B2B tech experts.
Technical Review
Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.