Cyber monitoring is a strategy that allows you to monitor your ICT systems and detect possible cyber threats. Cyber monitoring aims to provide an early warning of a cyber attack and minimize its impact. It also helps you assess the damage caused by a cyber attack and identify what data has been lost.
In this article, we will discuss what cyber monitoring is, why it’s important to set up a cyber monitoring strategy for your ICT systems, and how it works.
What is cyber monitoring?
The process of continuously watching an IT system for cyber threats, data breaches, or other system weaknesses is known as “cyber monitoring.” It is a preventative cybersecurity technique that can assist your IT staff in sorting through online activity and physical components to identify incidents that might be a threat to your systems or data.
Cyber monitoring involves collecting data from various sources including firewalls, intrusion detection systems, network routers, and similar devices. This data is then analyzed by a team of experts who look for patterns that may indicate an attack on the network or system. The specialists also perform regular tests to look for vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the system’s security infrastructure. Maintaining security for your organization, as well as for your staff, partners, and clients depends significantly on protecting your company’s IT infrastructure and data.
When choosing a cyber-monitoring solution, make sure it meets the following criteria:
- It must be able to monitor all parts of your network infrastructure.
- It needs to be able to detect anomalies in both traffic and systems.
- It has to be able to provide detailed information on any detected anomalies (for example, what happened, who did it, and when did it happen).
Cyber monitoring can be done in different ways:
- Firewalls: They filter incoming traffic according to rules which are applied to specific ports, protocols, and IP addresses. They allow legitimate traffic through while stopping unwanted traffic before it reaches your servers. Firewalls can also monitor traffic for malicious activity such as scanning or brute force attacks.
- Intrusion detection systems (IDS): IDSs are used to detect unusual activity on your networks such as port scans or other suspicious activities that could indicate an intrusion attempt by an attacker. IDSs use different methods to detect intrusions, including pattern matching, heuristic analysis, or statistical anomaly detection techniques.
- Network monitoring tools: These tools are used for identifying abnormal behavior in networks such as bandwidth usage spikes or unusual growth rates in certain areas.
- Log management: These tools are used to detail all events that are carried out within your IT, including firewalls, servers, networks, and other soft and hard components. The system alerts of errors code, login attempts, or potential threats from within or outside your environment.
How does cyber security threat monitoring work?
Cyber monitoring gives you real-time access to any illegal system changes or suspicious activity on your network. This enables IT professionals, to anticipate potential security threats and a wide range of data breaches.
Through your company’s security procedures, alien data is verified and observed through cyber monitoring. A local data center or a cloud database may be used to store data. Suspicious behaviors are defined as data gathered and examined, and these behaviors will set off alerts. The notifications are received by your IT staff, who then responds by implementing any required security precautions.
Why is cyber monitoring important?
Here are some reasons why cyber monitoring is important:
- Faster detection and reaction to threats
With real-time alerts from a cloud-based security solution, you can detect and respond to cyber threats faster than ever before.
Real-time alerts help you catch suspicious activity before it causes damage or disruption. For instance, if a hacker is trying to access your sensitive data, they might leave behind traces of their attack such as keyloggers or malware that can be detected by a cloud-based security solution.
- Cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated
Another reason why cyber monitoring is important is that cybersecurity attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication every year. The stakes are high — one security breach could cost small businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue due to data breaches, fines, and legal fees.
- Identifying and locating your cyber enemies
Another reason why monitoring is important is that it allows you to find and monitor your cyber enemies. It’s important to know what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and where they’re coming from. Knowing your enemies can help you protect yourself against them. You can use that knowledge to prevent an attack or even better, catch them in the act.
What can a lack of cyber monitoring cause?
Lack of cyber monitoring can result in:
- Data theft
Cyber attacks often include stealing sensitive information such as credit card details, passwords, and social security numbers. This could result in identity theft or fraud if the attacker uses your account details to access financial accounts or make purchases online.
- Disruption
Without adequate protection, hackers can gain access to sensitive files or delete files entirely with little chance of recovering them later on. This means that businesses could lose valuable information permanently which could affect their productivity levels or even lead to bankruptcy if they were unable to recover lost data quickly enough before it was too late.
Conclusion
Cyber monitoring is an essential part of any security strategy. It involves identifying potential threats as early as possible and taking action to prevent them from affecting your business.
While some organizations may choose to use an automated solution to perform cyber monitoring, many others opt for a manual approach. While this may seem like a step backward, it’s quite effective when combined with other security measures such as encryption and regular patching.
Organizations need to develop a robust cyber monitoring strategy if they want to remain competitive in the market. The key to developing such a strategy is understanding all the risks associated with cyber threats and vulnerabilities, as well as understanding the impact these threats can have on business continuity and operations.
Once you have identified these risks, you need to develop ways to mitigate them through the effective implementation of various best practices and technologies available today.