You’ve almost definitely experienced it before. The panic of a tech disaster catching you unprepared. Not knowing how long it will take to resolve, while your business comes to a grinding halt.
Afterwards, the cost hits. Perhaps it was a cyber attack, resulting in a fine, a ransom or loss of data and reputation. Perhaps it was significant system downtime, causing errors, losing valuable hours and precious income. It could be all of the above or more.
So how do you prevent this from happening? Proactive monitoring.
How does proactive monitoring help?
Proactive monitoring is like CCTV for your digital landscape. It’s your eyes and ears, watching out for the suspicious behaviour before it gets into your systems. You do it for your physical properties. So why not your digital ones?
Your network and devices are critical to your business. They’re how you communicate with your team and your customers, and they store your valuable data. If any of these systems are compromised, it would be a disaster.
But with proactive monitoring in place, you’ll know the moment something starts to go wrong. Here’s what it does for you:
Early threat detection
Proactive monitoring can spot unusual activity or potential security breaches before they become catastrophic. By monitoring the web, including dark web, for key information, threats can be recognised and countered early.
Reduced downtime
When your systems go down, it can cost you time, money, and customers. Proactive monitoring helps identify and address issues before they lead to downtime. This could be software crashes, server bandwidth or storage.
Cost savings
Repairing a small leak is far less costly than trying to rebuild a house. Proactive monitoring can save you money by addressing problems when they’re manageable, rather than waiting for it end naturally.
Enhanced performance
Proactive monitoring ensures your systems are running at peak performance. Your vital software applications, databases and your website are all monitored to avoid crashes and slowdowns. Keeping your business running.
Peace of mind
Knowing that your systems are being watched over gives you peace of mind. You can focus on steering your business toward success, rather than worrying about lurking threats.
How does it compare to a purely reactive approach?
Reactive monitoring isn’t always waiting for the worst to happen and then looking for a solution. There is some monitoring involved, but it’s looking for errors and issues that have already happened.
It’s incredibly manual, relies on remembering to make periodic checks, and can leave your business vulnerable to threats that might go undetected for days, weeks or even longer.
Imagine a scenario where your email suddenly crashes due to an overload of incoming messages. With reactive monitoring, you might not notice until your customers start complaining about missed emails. By then, you’re already in damage control mode.
With proactive monitoring you’d have already received notification that your inbox was close to full and could act early to prevent issues. But it goes deeper than just notification. The ‘proactive’ element means setting up automated systems that can handle the issue, before it becomes a crisis.
For example, if your network starts to experience a spike in traffic that could indicate a DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service, where your system is crippled by a flood of traffic), proactive monitoring will alert you immediately. Automatic defences are deployed that limit the incoming traffic or shut down sections of your network. Simultaneously you receive a notification and can take further action.
Compared to reactive monitoring, proactive monitoring offers the following:
Real-time awareness
You’re always in the know about what’s happening in your digital ecosystem. From email round-trip mail flow to SharePoint free space tracking. The health of your business is available.
Immediate action
When trouble is detected, proactive monitoring can trigger automated responses or alert your IT team, allowing for swift action.
Risk mitigation
By identifying and addressing potential issues early, you reduce the risk of major disruptions and costly downtime. Your brand identity is protected from fraud or impersonation and your teams are kept aware of their cyber hygiene.
Efficiency
Proactive monitoring keeps your systems running smoothly, ensuring your business operations remain efficient and uninterrupted.
There’s a bonus too. As well as keeping your business better protected, proactive monitoring can also boost your business’s bottom line.
Boosting your bottom line
Cost savings
As mentioned earlier, rebuilding a flooded house is an incredibly expensive ordeal. Patching a leaky pipe is much less so. By identifying and addressing potential issues before they become catastrophes, proactive monitoring can save serious money.
Increased productivity
Technical issues slow teams down. Constant intermittent connection drops, user account lock outs, system slowdowns, the list goes on. When your systems are running properly, your people can focus on their tasks without being constantly interrupted by technical issues. In turn, you can focus on business growth instead of firefighting.
Competitive advantage
If you have the right tools, the fastest systems, and the most suitable security, you’re positioned to take full advantage of your market. Your business can focus on its customers and its products.
So, now you understand what proactive monitoring is and how it’s a crucial part of your business success. How do you implement it?
Summary and how to get started
As you might expect, initially there’s a lot to consider. But it isn’t something that needs you to have expert technical skills.
If you have an IT partner, we’d highly recommend speaking to them about this. They may already do some proactive monitoring for you.
If you’d like to find out more about how our expert teams can help you with proactive monitoring, you can contact us here. We offer extensive monitoring, specialised for the alternative investment industry.
