24/7 monitoring with PRTG

Monitoring your network 24/7 is essential for several critical reasons:

• Security threat detection: Cyberattacks, such as hacking, malware infections, and ransomware, can happen at any time. Continuous monitoring allows you to detect suspicious activities like unauthorized access, unusual traffic patterns, or malware before they lead to data breaches or system damage.
• Minimizing downtime: Network outages or failures can result in significant financial and productivity losses. With 24/7 monitoring, you can identify potential issues (like failing hardware, network congestion, or system overloads) before they escalate.
• Compliance requirements: Many industries have strict regulations, like GDPR or HIPAA, that mandate constant monitoring to ensure data security and privacy. Failing to comply can result in heavy fines and legal consequences. Continuous monitoring helps maintain compliance by documenting incidents and providing detailed logs for audits.
• Performance optimization: Real-time monitoring allows you to track network performance metrics, such as bandwidth usage, latency, and packet loss. This enables you to identify bottlenecks, optimize resource allocation, and improve overall efficiency, ensuring smooth operations and a better user experience.
• Preventing data loss: Unexpected incidents, like hardware failures or cyberattacks, can result in data loss if not caught early. Continuous monitoring helps detect issues quickly, allowing you to take corrective action (e.g., activating backup systems or isolating the problem) to prevent data corruption or loss.
• Improved incident response: When network issues are detected in real time, your IT team can respond faster. This minimizes the time needed to investigate and resolve problems, making your network more resilient. It also enhances customer service by reducing the time that users are affected by network problems.

PRTG comes in three different flavors, depending on the size of your IT network and requirements:

• PRTG Network Monitor is easy to use and great for monitoring networks of all shapes and sizes.
• PRTG Enterprise Monitor is designed for large distributed systems. It's ideal if you have thousands of devices in several different locations.
• Don't have the know-how to monitor your infrastructure in house? With PRTG Hosted Monitor, you can get on with your core business and leave the monitoring to us.

In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive.

On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.