Putting into Perspective the Importance of a Secure Network....By Way of the NFL.

When the New England Patriots take the field as a team during the season, the only concern of the players is to work together in order to get a win against that day’s opponent. For the New England Patriots as an organization, however, so much more happens behind the scenes leading up to each game than what fans see on the field. From the ownership to jersey sales to television coverage to vending to event security staff, the Patriots are a network that must operate efficiently on every level in order for each game day to occur without a hitch. Can you imagine how disastrous it would be for the entire Patriots’ organization if any aspect of this network just shut down completely? Just like the Patriots as an organization is at its best when their network of staff is working to the best of its ability, so is every company whose business relies on a computer based network. In our increasingly digital world, having a reliable network is more crucial than ever to businesses everywhere. At ACS, we are committed to ensuring that your business’ network is always functioning to full capacity. Our expert staff of technicians works around the clock to help your company meet its networking and data protection needs. Let ACS enable you to relax while you watch your favorite NFL team on Sundays, knowing that your network will be operating at its best when you go back to work Monday morning.

Monitoring and its importance

According to Wikipedia, “Monitoring generally means to be aware of the state of a system”. It is an essential part of any organization, state, government and even family. Monitoring helps us to avoid circumstances that may cause loss to time, money, resource, relation, etc. For instance, let us take a very simple example of a business organization lacking efficient internal monitoring system. This may lead to many circumstances such as server break down, power failure, etc. It causes delay in work, wastage of time, loss of money, loss of resources, etc plus an additional expense that the organization will have to bare to solve the issue.


Being more specific, we can say that monitoring should be done appropriately according to priority. As I work in an IT industry, I know the importance of servers, network, computers, etc in an organization. Hence, these must be the first things to be monitored effectively and efficiently to avoid break downs and hindrances in smooth work flow.

A computer network must be constantly monitored to avoid slow or failing network. Continuous monitoring is done be a system that notifies the network administrator in case of outages. An intrusion detection system monitors networks from outside threats, whereas an internal network monitoring system monitors network to avoid problems such as overload, network crash, etc. Network monitoring is a critical IT function that can aid in saving a lot of cost of the company in network performance, infrastructure, employee productivity and many other things. Following are some of the strategic tasks a network monitoring system can do for the organization:

• Confirm regulatory and policy compliance

• Search redundant resources and emphasizes on possible cost savings

• Solve efficiency-sapping mysteries like dropped mail sessions

• Help determine employee productivity

• Spot overloaded equipment before it can bring down a network

• Identify weak wide-area-network links and other bottlenecks

• Measure latency, or the delayed transfer of data

• Find anomalous internal traffic that might be indicate a security threat

Server monitoring is done to have a check on the speed of the server, failures and other such problems. By this the owner will be able to know when one or all of his computer devices are down due to server issues. Monitoring if done regularly, can avoid outages and help company from losses due to major crashes and break downs.

Monitoring equipments help to take immediate actions and respond to the problems before it becomes an unavoidable issue and start harming the devices, processes, time and cost. Network monitoring systems can be software or firmware, simple or complex. There are open-source tools available which are innovation and very inexpensive. They can work with most of the tools, platforms and environments. If you feel that your network is too complex and it requires professional skills to monitor, you can always outsource monitoring. Outsourcing companies offer wide level of services and packages that can suit your budget. Their professional touch will make it all the more advantageous for the organization.

ACS Services is one such company that provides IT services for easy management. Its list of services includes:

• Managed IT Services

• Network Support

• Server Support

• PC Support

• Help Desk Services

• Help Desk On Demand

• Setup and Configuration

• Relocation Support

• Data Protection

• Total Server Protection

• Disaster Recovery

It is a one-stop destination for all your IT needs. Now professional monitoring is not too far away. For more information, visit:

http://www.acs.com/

Other sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_monitoring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_server_monitoring

http://www.cio.com/article/133700/Network_Monitoring_Definition_and_Solutions


- Brian Kingsley, Director of Technical Services, Boston