Until fairly recently, the concept of ongoing, continual monitoring of a network seemed like a dream due to the complex nature of what that kind of activity would involve. Nowadays, there are more and more companies entering the market that specialize in doing that kind of constant assessment of their client's networks. This new trend is made possible by several new technologies.
The type of security monitoring one would need is dependent on the applications, size of the network, and level of control needed, but security monitoring is exactly like it sounds. The company providing the monitoring service scans every part of the system while looking for unwanted changes and vulnerabilities that surface. They can then act when issues are found by either contacting the administrator of the system or dealing with them on the spot. An example of a program that does this on a much smaller scale should be familiar to almost everyone. Anti-virus services actively monitor a device and deal with threats as they surface. Round-the-clock monitoring offered by IT security companies do this, but they are not limited to apps and viruses. They have the ability to check every aspect of a network in real-time.
A security monitoring service has the capability of keeping an eye on almost every aspect of the clients’ systems and networks. They analyze network traffic while looking for abnormalities. They monitor database systems, such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Express, MySQL, Oracle, Informix, Paradox, IBM DB2, and many more. If any changes are discovered that are not made by authorized users, immediate action can be taken to safeguard the file system.
Besides watching and reporting on suspicious activity, security monitoring can also be used to track events that take place on the machines connected to the network. Login and Logout information, password attempts, file systems, and databases accessed by specific members, and much more.
Now that the possibility of staying up-to-date on your network is possible 24/7, there is no good reason not to take advantage of the services that make that happen. One might ask if it is really necessary to know about everything that is happening across the entirety of a network every minute of every day, and the answer is yes. One of the reasons that hackers and writers of malicious scripts and malware are so successful is that they can enter a system, do whatever damage they wish to do, and then get out without being detected. There is no way for a system or network admin to understand that someone had broken into the system at all, most of the time. With the ongoing security monitoring being administered by professionals, every attempt to make an unauthorized change would be caught.