Network Security Monitoring: A Complete Guide

Cybersecurity breaches are commonplace, and several occur in organizations every day. While some intrusions may be deemed minor, many are often significant with little monetary resources or data loss. Some are even catastrophic.

Network security monitoring is an automated process that monitors network devices and traffic for security vulnerabilities, threats, and suspicious activities. Organizations can use it to detect and respond to cybersecurity breaches quickly. Learn more in this post about why network security monitoring is essential, how it differs from network monitoring, and its advantages.

Software for Network Security Monitoring

Network security monitoring software detects and analyzes vulnerabilities, alerting you of potential security issues. Cybersecurity warnings allow you to quickly protect your organization from network intrusions and subsequent disasters.

Network security monitoring software collects metrics around client-server communications, network payload, encrypted traffic sessions, and other network operations to uncover cybersecurity threats. You can also use the network security monitoring software to detect patterns in network traffic flows.

Moreover, you can use the software to generate automatic security alerts and reports, enabling you to quickly respond to any suspicious activity and take appropriate remedial actions. You can also leverage visualizations such as charts and graphs provided by network security monitoring tools to pinpoint malicious activities and troubleshoot cybersecurity threats.

The Difference Between Network Monitoring and Network Security Monitoring

A network monitoring application examines and tracks network activity for problems caused by malfunctioning hardware or overloaded resources such as servers, routers, and network connections. Network monitoring measures three main metrics:

• Network availability (uptime). This indicates how well the network responds to the connectivity and throughput demands.
• Network performance. This measures the network’s bandwidth, throughput, latency, error rates, and jitter.
• Network configuration. This process assigns network settings, policies, controls, and flows to support communication.

A network monitoring tool can alert you by a short messaging system (SMS) or email when it detects any problem with availability, performance, or configuration. As a network administrator, you need to understand your network topology, configurations, performance, and even security to troubleshoot and correct the problem.

A network security monitoring system, in contrast, protects the organization from potential vulnerabilities and exploits. Unlike network monitoring that offers generic monitoring, network security monitoring analyzes multiple factors, including:

• Network payload
• Network protocols
• Client-server communications
• Traffic patterns
• Encrypted traffic sessions
• Traffic flow

The primary goal of network security monitoring is to provide continuous service that checks the business environment for suspicious activities and threats. IT teams can then investigate the reported activities and take appropriate corrective measures.

Although distinct, network monitoring and network security monitoring tools often overlap. For example, the focus of network monitoring is to help you understand the composition, availability status, performance, and configuration of the network components. However, network security monitoring is woven inexorably into each network monitoring responsibility.

For example, you cannot achieve high throughput if an attacker floods the network with malware that takes advantage of network configurations, leaving your network vulnerable to exploits. For these reasons, it’s typical to have network administrators work directly with security teams to perform several tasks and correlate results.

Advantages of Network Security Monitoring

You cannot achieve effective security without vigilance, and the cybersecurity world is no different. Network security monitoring is the best way to vigilance in a connected world. Some advantages of network security monitoring are shorter cyber-threat response times, easier security testing, and easier detection of subtle and new threats.

Minimize the Cyber-Threat Response Time Significantly

Most attackers seem to seek out easy targets that have unprotected systems or don’t watch their networks closely enough. Network security monitoring can help you reduce the response time if a hacker tries to intrude. Without an effective security monitoring solution, it can take months for you to discover that your company has been hacked.

Simplify Security Testing

With an appropriate network security monitoring application, you can always tweak the configurations in the settings menu. You can then use the application to test the network to determine if it is still foolproof after configuring the settings to your liking. Discover new threats

Because the cybersecurity landscape is changing continuously, you need an intelligent tool that does not simply rely on known threats. With an effective network security monitoring solution, you can always look for suspicious activities and take corrective measures. By discovering non-specific patterns, network monitoring solutions can help you detect new threats such as “zero-day” attacks that would otherwise have been difficult without one. Detect subtle threats more easily

Some attacks are obvious to detect in the network, while others are elusive. For example, a blatant ransomware attack could lock up the entire PC, only displaying the ransom note. On the other hand, bandwidth hijacking and botnets are far more challenging to detect.

An effective network security monitoring solution can help you keep an eye on any abnormal pattern, such as bandwidth hijacking and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Protecting Your Data with Parallels RAS

Digitization is no longer a competitive advantage or savvy option for today’s businesses—it’s a necessity. However, as more and more companies undergo digital transformation, cybersecurity attacks rise.

Secure and reliable networks safeguard the organization’s operations and interests and any customer who exchanges data with the company. Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) is an all-in-one, secure-by-design desktop virtualization solution that simplifies access to corporate resources while promoting organization productivity.

As a desktop virtualization solution, Parallels RAS centralizes the management of IT resources. This provides employees with encrypted connections to the datacenter using transport layer security (TSL) and Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 protocols.

IT teams can enable the right level of access to corporate resources based on device, user profiles, network, or even location, for every employee, partner, or contractor. Centralized IT administration and access control policies allow the organization to prevent data loss, ensure privacy and safeguard organization assets while comprehensive real-time monitoring and reporting support compliance efforts.

Most importantly, Parallels RAS provides secure remote access via multi-factor authentication (MFA), data segregation, kiosk mode, smart-card authentication, and clipboard redirection, among others.

Test out Parallel RAS today and see its network security monitoring capabilities first-hand!