Spring is among us: warmer weather, blooming flowers, and the need to start monitoring on-campus university and school networks again now that students are starting to go back to in-person learning. Many of the customers I’ve talked to in the education vertical have said that at the moment, there isn’t much along the lines of network traffic, but once students are back on campus it’s going to pick right back up again.
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Integrate your network alarms with Microsoft Teams
Posted on - by Jeff Morrison
2020 was a year of incredible change—changes that I believe will have a lasting impact, but also changes that require immense flexibility with traditional structure and workflows. This is observable in every industry, and ours is no different. Not only has the model of network traffic changed with a work-from-home model, but so has our ability to collaborate as a team. We moved from primarily being in the same physical room as our colleagues to now spending our time in virtual channels. One of the most widely adopted of these digital workspaces is Microsoft Teams.
With Teams being the primary space for collaboration, having a network monitoring solution like Plixer Scrutinizer post alarms to a dedicated Teams channel is an incredibly effective way of monitoring, tracking and assigning network events to team members for investigation. Let’s take a look at how easy it is to configure this integration within Scrutinizer.
Read moreWhy and how to export a violator list for DDoS mitigation
Posted on - by Scott
The need to detect and mitigate denial-of-service attacks is nothing new to network and security administrators. DoS attacks on enterprise networks have been occurring for years.
Read moreCustom script-based sensor for PRTG
Posted on - by Khalil Ismayilov
Today I would like to explain how to create a custom script that sends specific information to PRTG as a sensor. Customers often ask me how to use PRTG to tack the uptime and downtime of Scrutinizer. So, what specific parameter needs to be set up so that the PRTG sensor would react immediately on it?
Read moreShould you be monitoring ping?
Posted on - by Dylan Mclaughlin
Ping is one of those protocols that no one thinks about until it isn’t working and you’re trying to quickly troubleshoot connectivity between devices. Officially known as ICMP, ping is one of the older RFCs and is most used for its echo requests and replies for troubleshooting networks. Some administrators simply block all ICMP everywhere on their network. Is this for everyone? Is this necessary? With everyone’s network having its own constraints and security policies, hopefully this post can provide some insight into the thought process behind monitoring for ping.
Read moreHow to improve response time for life-critical network events with Plixer Scrutinizer
Posted on - by Stephen Tutterow
The healthcare industry has been on red alert for more than a year now. Workloads have doubled and the amount of time required to maintain the network is in direct relation with this trend. Now, more than ever, beyond-perfect response times are a requirement, otherwise lives are on the line. Plixer’s healthcare customers use Scrutinizer to ensure they have a constant, real-time source of truth for the most common and most frustrating issues. This blog will focus on how to mitigate network slowdowns, improve overall visibility, and improve DNS visibility, one of the top challenges the healthcare industry faces today.
Read moreThe harsh truth about the next cyberattack
Posted on - by James Dougherty
I don’t know about you, but it seems like there’s news of some big data breach every other month. The hard truth is that no one can really predict the next cybersecurity meltdown. There is no doubt in my mind that it will happen again (and again…). Over the past 15-plus years, the one thing stuck out as being effective was the idea of always evaluating your security posture.
Read moreMonitoring Microsoft Teams traffic with Plixer Scrutinizer
Posted on - by Timothy Morris
The modern workplace is filled with companies working largely over inter-office messaging systems. These tools often leverage several different functions aside from chatting, such as video conferencing and file sharing. What was once just a small tool could now potentially be sucking down your office’s bandwidth. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at Microsoft Teams. Since this tool is now coming included in Microsoft Office’s standard line-up, its presence is becoming more and more common on corporate networks.
Read more5 ways of verifying security risks and avoiding false positives
Posted on - by Joanna Buckley
I think I can safely assume that everyone knows the cautionary tale of the boy who cried wolf. If you don’t, the moral is the more you say something is wrong when nothing is wrong, the more likely it is no one will believe you when something actually is wrong. In the network security world, no one wants a security solution that cries wolf. Hidden within dozens of false positives, there could be one issue lurking, waiting to cause a lot of trouble on your network.
Read moreHow human negligence affects network security
Posted on - by Elgin Robinson
As enterprises adjust to the new normal and remote work, they are bracing for potential attacks resulting from employee carelessness. Bad habits, such as leaving devices unattended while on the VPN, can pose serious risks to the business. This blog will discuss how human negligence affects network security and provide some examples of how some threat vectors impacts organizations.
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