What Is Network Monitoring?

Network monitoring is the practice of collecting information about the current state and health of the network. By collecting data from multiple sources on the network and analyzing it, network administrators can determine how the network is operating and diagnose and correct any problems that they identify.

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What Is Network Monitoring?

How Does Network Monitoring Work?

Network monitoring complements network management and works by collecting data from the various systems that make up an organization’s computer network. For example, an organization may collect data from routers, firewalls, load balancers, and endpoints within its environment.

This can be accomplished using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), which most devices support and that can be used to collect a variety of different data. Some of the information that an organization may collect as part of a network monitoring program includes bandwidth usage, CPU utilization, interface errors/discards, IP time delays and hop counts, throughput, and uptime.

All of these pieces of information provide hints about the health of the network. For example, CPU utilization and uptime hint at how well an endpoint is doing its job, while interface errors and discards can point to issues in the system. By collecting and analyzing this information, a networking team can identify and correct issues before they have a significant impact on the business.

Benefits of Network Monitoring

Network monitoring provides an organization with a better understanding of how its network works. This can provide a variety of benefits, including the following:

  • Network Visibility: Network monitoring provides an organization with greater insight into how the company’s network is being used and how well it is operating. This visibility can be used to identify devices on the network and detect network security and infrastructure issues that pose a risk to the business.
  • Enhanced Efficiency: With the visibility that network monitoring provides, an organization can determine how well its current infrastructure supports the business. Network flow mapping and bandwidth utilization analysis can help to identify ways in which the network infrastructure can be reconfigured or upgraded to improve efficiency.
  • Strategic Planning: IT teams have limited budgets and resources to allocate for system updates and upgrades. Network monitoring can provide valuable insight into the changes that are most necessary to support the organization’s operations now and in the future.
  • Improved Availability: Network monitoring can enable an organization to find and fix issues before they pose a significant risk to the business. As a result, the company suffers fewer outages due to overlooked network issues.
  • Better Productivity: Network monitoring can improve network performance, which improves the performance of the applications that rely on and communicate over that network. This has a positive impact on the productivity of the employees who use these applications to fulfill their roles.
  • Security Management: Cyberattacks commonly come over the network and have effects that are visible in network traffic. Network monitoring can help an organization to more rapidly identify and respond to cyberattacks, reducing their impact on the business.

Use Cases for Network Monitoring

Network monitoring processes can provide benefits to the organization wherever the company has network infrastructure. Some example areas where network monitoring tools and techniques can be applied include the following:

  • Data Centers: Organizations can deploy network monitoring tools and capabilities within their data centers. This enables the detection of various events — such as power outages or network capacity issues — that could threaten the data center’s ability to provide services.
  • Cloud: Many companies are adopting a multi-cloud infrastructure where data is flowing between multiple cloud environments and the corporate data center. Network monitoring can help to optimize cloud network topology to improve performance and reduce cloud network costs.
  • Containers: Containerization has its benefits, but it can reduce visibility into an organization’s applications. Monitoring container network traffic can help to ensure that data is properly flowing between the various parts of a containerized application.

Network Monitoring in Check Point NGFW

Check Point next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) provide a variety of tools designed to support network monitoring programs and enhance an organization’s visibility into its network performance and security.

  • For customers who prefer a turn-key solution, Check Point includes several tools for monitoring the network including CLI and GUI-based. Check Point’s SmartView Monitor included in the SmartConsole management graphical user interface (GUI) provides insight into network and security performance. Companies can use SmartView Monitor and the data that it provides to perform network traffic analysis (NTA) and identify and correct potential issues based on identifying anomalies from learned patterns of system resource utilization.
  • For customers with larger estates, Check Point integrates with SNMP monitoring tools. Find out more in the Check Point SNMP Best Practices guide.
  • Also check out our Pro Services Support option to automate network and security infrastructure monitoring.
  • Finally, customers with many remote branch offices can optimize and monitor their Wide Area Networks (WAN) with integrated SD-WAN in Quantum firewalls.

Check Point Horizon Network Detection and Response (NDR) expands an organization’s network security visibility with tools designed to support both proactive threat hunting and threat detection and response efforts. Horizon NDR leverages threat intelligence provided by ThreatCloud AI and a range of visualizations to provide security analysts with a better understanding of what is happening on their network.

With a Check Point NGFW, companies achieve the security visibility and protection that they need. Find out more about what to look for in an NGFW with this buyer’s guide. Then, see the capabilities of a Check Point NGFW for yourself with a free demo.

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