Is your network monitoring system catching everything?

Our company has tried and used many of the leading Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools that are on the market. We’ve had to switch vendors a few times, either because of service and support issues, or product functionality.

We’re happy now with the RMM tool we have, but we learned something the hard way. No RMM tool, no matter how comprehensive, is going to do an adequate job of identifying certain kinds of network configuration or security problems. Most of the RMM tools do a great job of monitoring network operational trends and generating alerts when a device on the network – or the network itself – needs attention.

What the RMM tools WON’T tell you is what users have access to the network that shouldn’t, what devices have been decommissioned but are still a part of the domain, what devices have been added to the network but have no agents running on them, and other critical issues.

That’s why, even if you currently have one of the industry-leading network monitoring systems installed with agents running looking to detect issues, you still may be at risk. I always advise my clients to run a special network assessment tool that was designed specifically to catch issues that the RMM tools miss.

There are a number of important security and maintenance issues related to end-user access and security settings that your monitoring agents aren’t even looking at. Ask your network administrator if he or she has recently run a Network Detective network assessment. If not, send your administrator my way and I’ll tell him how to get this test done quickly and inexpensively.

What RMM tool do you use today, and do you rely on it to know everything you need to know about your network?