Network monitoring refers to the process of continuously observing a computer network for any issues, performance metrics, and security threats. It involves tracking network traffic, checking the status of network devices, and analyzing data flow to ensure optimal performance and identify problems before they escalate. This can include monitoring bandwidth usage, detecting anomalies, and ensuring that all components of the network are functioning properly. The goal is to maintain network reliability, security, and efficiency.
Network monitoring involves these components and features:
IT departments and DevOps, network administrators, security departments, business executives and managers, support teams, compliance officers, and managed service providers (MSPs) all use network monitoring as a key part of their roles. Network monitoring is essential for maintaining network health, optimizing performance, enhancing security, and supporting business objectives across various roles and industries. Benefits include:
Network monitoring has evolved significantly over the past few decades, greatly impacting the marketplace. As networks have become more complex with the rise of cloud computing, IoT, and remote work, network polling and monitoring tools have adapted to keep up with these new and diverse environments. The move from periodic monitoring to real-time analytics has transformed how organizations address network performance, enabling faster decision-making and proactive management. Plus, with the integration of automation and AI, spotting problems and resolving them has become easier. The focus on security has also intensified, with enhanced network monitoring solutions now incorporating features like intrusion detection to combat increasing cyber threats. Furthermore, user experience optimization has gained importance, leading businesses to monitor application performance closely, particularly with the growth of SaaS applications. As organizations have transitioned to cloud services and remote work, cloud-based monitoring solutions have emerged to provide visibility across distributed networks. Lastly, technological advances have made these tools more accessible and cost-effective, so that even smaller businesses can leverage powerful monitoring solutions for improved network management.
While network polling and monitoring tools and technologies offer the promise of enhanced efficiency and reliability, the reality is that businesses often face hurdles when it comes to monitoring effectively.
Key challenges in network analytics include:
Let's look at how NIKSUN can solve all these challenges for network monitoring with expert network management solutions.
Problem: As networks grow more complex, monitoring all their components can be overwhelming.
Solution: NIKSUN's comprehensive platform makes it simple, drawing data from the most complex networks, including those that span geographic locations and use various access points and devices. Additionally, NIKSUN's powerful solution supports robust hybrid deployments, seamlessly operating across cloud, virtual, and on-prem environments with a single pane of glass for all, so data for your entire network infrastructure is visible and available for analysis.
Problem: The sheer volume of data from various sources can be too demanding to manage and shift through.
Solution: NIKSUN's zero-loss data capture and warehousing technology works at any scale to ensure all the data is ingested and accounted for from every source type (packets, logs, flows, device metrics polling via SNMP, and more), in one unified, cross-correlated, high-scale database. In other words, NIKSUN is designed to handle an extremely high volume of data that overwhelms competitors.
Problem: Multiple network monitoring tools can lead to integration issues and fragmented visibility.
Solution: NIKSUN solves this problem by offering a unified platform that can ingest all the data from your entire network infrastructure and provide a unified view into everything you operate, so you don't need multiple tools. NIKSUN's single-pane-of-glass approach means you gain comprehensive visibility and crucial insights for every app and service, internal or third-party, for all kinds of data – logs, metrics, flows, packets, and more.
Problem: You need skilled personnel to operate complex monitoring tools effectively.
Solution: NIKSUN addresses this challenge by providing a user-friendly platform that requires no specialized expertise to navigate, empowering your existing team. Reporting is streamlined and presented through intuitive visualizations and executive-to-analyst dashboards that are automatically generated from the underlying data, minimizing the risk of inaccuracies due to human error or bias. With NIKSUN, everything is accessible from one centralized platform. You only need to familiarize yourself with a single UI to manage all aspects, and components worktogether seamlessly. Automated reporting alerts you to only the problems that require your attention and generate easily-digestable audit dashboards to ensure you stay in compliance with all major regulations and standards.
Problem: Network monitoring in real-time can reveal immediate threats, and responding to them quickly enough to avoid damage can be a challenge.
Solution: NIKSUN provides the capabilities to address this problem, including a comprehensive monitoring solution for real-time visibility into network activity across your entire infrastructure, so you can detect anomalies and potential threats as they occur; robust, real-time alarming that automatically alerts on suspicious activities and performance issues, ensuring that relevant teams are notified immediately; Case management capabilities are built right into the platform, so team members can open investigations for incidents and share Case information as part of an Incident Response Plan (IRP), all without relying on third-party tools; integrated threat intelligence feeds, including NIKSUN's frequently updated threat lists and the option of third-party feeds, deliver valuable insights that into emerging threats. Automated responses can also be leveraged to ensure the highest levels of cyber defense without the need for human intervention.
Problem: Compliance requirements can complicate monitoring efforts.
Solution: NIKSUN's simple setup lets you collect data easily from everywhere in your network and bring it back into one central, aggregated view, making compliance tracking and reporting a breeze. Because NIKSUN integrates with all your apps, databases, servers, and more from its powerful UI, you can collect any type of data you want from any area in your infrastructure and drill, report, and alarm on it in a few clicks. You can set up automation and generate targets for these tasks, as well. NIKSUN's comprehensive solution is truly a one-stop shop for every conceivable use case –security, performance, compliance, availability, and more. Data and analytics can be stored for as long a period as desired to meet even the most stringent standards.
Problem: Comprehensive network monitoring solutions can be pricey – putting them out of reach for some small and medium businesses.
Solution: Fortunately, NIKSUN's platform – the same technology that safeguards the U.S. Department of Defense – is accessible to businesses of all sizes. And it is remarkably affordable, so you can achieve total security and visibility at a fraction of competitors' prices, no matter what size your business is. Unlike others, our platform is priced reasonably from the start and scales economically with zero hidden fees. What's more, we offer valuable freebies, like complimentary training and working sessions, with NIKSUN's own Product Management team members, who partner with you to make sure you get the most out of your deployment.
Problem: Network monitoring tools that can't scale for expansion won't be able to grow with your business.
Solution: From its inception, NIKSUN's platform was designed to operate at an extreme scale, capable of running more than a hundred thousand threat intelligence rules across multi-Tbps of network traffic in real-time. This extreme scalability is why NIKSUN is the chosen provider of Full Packet Capture for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in the Defense Information System Agency (DISA)'s network protection program. If it can perform effectively at the scale of the DoD, you can be confident that it can perform effectively for your growing business.
NIKSUN is the recognized world leader in empowering organizations to Know the Unknown®. Since 1997, we have been committed to delivering the most innovative solutions for securing and optimizing the networks of over a thousand customers including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and service providers.
Our industry-leading suite of scalable, forensics-based cyber security, network mobility management tools, and network performance monitoring products provide customers with in-depth and actionable insight into security threats, performance issues, and compliance risks. NIKSUN's patented real-time analysis and recording technology is the industry's most comprehensive solution for securing and maintaining dynamic network infrastructure.