Remote Monitoring as an Additional Layer of Security

One of the key checks in a good remote monitoring solution is keeping track of failed logins and other security audit issues. There are thousands upon thousands of malicious users out there scanning the internet for a way into your systems. It probably doesn’t even have anything to do with who you are. It is just that there are computers doing nothing but scanning the internet looking for vulnerable targets. We often see the Windows security log filled with failed logins from random IP addresses.  This can be caused by a port being left open, a firewall left disabled, or a misconfiguration somewhere else in the chain.   

In addition, software vendors are constantly releasing patches and updates, many of which are designed to fix security problems, or patch other critical functionality. It’s a good idea to have a solution sitting in the background, monitoring your systems to make sure they are fully patched, and that nothing is happening that will prevent updates to your operating or antivirus systems.

Whatever the cause of the issue, shutting down attack vectors is a principal means of plugging the holes to help prevent cyber-intrusions. Having another set of eyes sitting outside the organization, watching over these kinds of events is like another layer of insurance. 

We Will Get to That Later

Everyone is busy, all of the time, period. There are always more tasks and projects than can be accomplished in a day, and as a result, things get prioritized and de-prioritized. Preventive maintenance and checks are easy to lose sight of. It’s like changing the oil in your car.  Does it hurt to let it slide for a few days or a week? Probably not. But then it slips into weeks and months, and before you know it, the maintenance task becomes so big, it is a project unto itself.

When you have someone in your corner keeping an eye on things, the preventive maintenance can go on unhindered. This is because you have a team who is just doing that. It is their job to not let it fall through the cracks. This is an advantage to your company, because it lets your internal team focus on those high impact, line of business issues, while your partner is sitting in the background, changing the oil, checking the anti-freeze, and airing up the tires

Get Ahead of the Curve

How do you know when your resources are hitting the max limits?  If the yardstick is waiting for the users to start complaining, then it is too late. A solid remote monitoring solution will start picking up on trends and provide alerts that a server is getting taxed, whether that is memory, processing, or disk.  

We have seen it more times that we can count, the database server chews up the last little bit of disk space, and then the ERP system starts to cough and hiccup. Remote monitoring would have let us know well in advance that we were running out of space. We would have had a chance to correct it before anyone even knew it was a problem.

Conclusion

If you have technology hardware, then monitoring is a must. Networks and server systems are just too complex to not have something sitting over the top of the pile, looking for problems and trying to prevent little things from becoming big things.

Atlas Precision is a provider of these services for our customers, and we can tailor a remote monitoring solution to be as proactive or benign as a customer’s needs dictate.  

If you just need another set of eyes to let you know when things are not quite right, we can do it. If you want to take the next step and have the patching and maintenance done proactively, we can help you with that too.   

Our goal is to get your maintenance plan into the “Goldilocks Zone”, not too little, not too much, just right.