Monitoring Pros and Cons

Dealing with other people, whether in the office or a home environment, can often be troublesome. There is always a case of someone trying to be better than someone else, or trying to take advantage of their naiveté. There are solutions out there that make it easier than ever to help keep your home and business safe. Here are some of the best out there.

Security Monitoring
On the home front, it helps to have a security monitoring system. Think about this as a surveillance camera system that gives you a glimpse of your home, allowing you to know immediately if there is a break-in or other type of intrusion. You can also implement this for an office environment, where it’s arguably just as useful to protect your organization’s physical and digital assets.

Network Monitoring
When an IT technician is monitoring a system, they can see if there is some sort of internal or external factor influencing the network. Network monitoring is mostly used to make sure that your network is actually functioning as it should be. Technicians can use remote monitoring software to check endpoints, networking equipment, and server functionality, while also making sure that they aren’t being subject to threats and other issues. Since businesses depend so heavily on their technology to function, it’s no wonder that they are willing to go all-in on a system like this to guarantee maximum uptime. Furthermore, detecting small problems and addressing them before they become major issues can help you avoid unnecessary costs in the long run.

Some network monitoring software can let technicians get a glimpse of how users are using their devices. This provides you with an at-a-glance assessment of the productivity of your employees, allowing you the opportunity to either improve productivity or reinforce good behaviors for problem employees. This also provides an opportunity for your business to keep employees from visiting dangerous or wasteful websites.

Application Monitoring
Some applications also provide IT administrators with ways to monitor activity logs for how the applications are actually being used. Keeping a watchful eye on how your staff are using these applications is a great way to see whether or not you need to put your foot down on a particularly bothersome issue. You can take a look at how your employees are using solutions like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or instant messaging. For example, you can monitor an employee while they are on the phone with a client so you can provide valuable feedback on how to improve.

Ultimately, you’ll get the most out of your cloud applications by knowing how your employees use solutions, and why. This knowledge can be used to develop an understanding of the solutions, as well as showcase how you can more effectively use them. If you have software that’s simply not being used, for example, it can be removed from operations entirely so as not to waste further assets on it.

Mobile Device Monitoring
Mobile devices are useful for keeping your employees connected to important information and data, but it comes at a price. They can potentially be quite distracting, leading to lots of wasted time on your part. Employees might not give full control over their personal mobile devices to the employer, though, creating a sort-of catch-22 regarding mobile devices in the workplace. Unless you plan on issuing every single employee a mobile device for enhanced productivity, you need to have a Bring Your Own Device policy to make sure your employees know what they can and can’t do with their mobile devices regarding company data and assets.

If the employee opts in to your BYOD policy, they will know that their device is being monitored, but they will likely just want to know what you can or can’t access and change. This ultimately means that they will be making a sacrifice to be more productive with their smartphones, prompting at least a little reassurance on your part that they don’t have to worry about your business messing with their personal information or changing important data.

How can your business take advantage of monitoring? To find out, reach out to us at 708-781-7110.