Who’s Been Accessing Your Network? Here’s How to Find Out

Have you ever heard of event logs for your network? These are records of who is doing what on your network, and why. Understanding how event logs work can help to minimize leaked data and identify significant issues on a workstation or laptop.

Event Logs, Explained
Event logs keep track of events and notifications stored in your computer’s background. These logs contain errors and other important details concerning the performance of your PC, including notifications that may not appear in a popup window. In terms of security, one of the most valuable uses of event logs is identifying and tracking suspicious activity on workstations.

For example, what if a hacker managed to steal user credentials from a staff member? They could then log into your network remotely and access a wealth of sensitive information, all without setting off any flags. However, by reviewing the event logs, you may catch imposters accessing your network from across the world.

If a hacker is intent on infiltrating your network, they will likely use one of two methods; try to break in with brute force, or try to sneak past your defenses using legitimate methods. The latter is growing more common, as sophisticated attacks are difficult to detect in time to stop. If you’re not paying attention to your event logs, or you don’t have dedicated technicians to routinely comb through them, then you may not notice that there’s someone with an IP originating from the other side of the world digging through your network.

Additionally, event logs are crucial in helping IT technicians identify a hardware or driver issue before it negatively affects the end-user. By using event logs as an early warning system and catching a problem more quickly, downtime is minimized.

Take Advantage of Remote Monitoring and Management
Of course, you don’t have time to sit around and monitor event logs all day. In fact, this isn’t a job for your in-house IT technicians, either. They would rather be innovating and finding ways to improve operations, not keeping their eyes glued to event logs. A great way for SMBs to meet this need is to outsource the responsibility of network monitoring and management to a managed service provider.

Monitoring event logs is something that all businesses should do. To learn more about how doing so can help you improve network security, reach out to the IT professionals at Computerware. We can remotely monitor and manage your infrastructure so you don’t have to. To learn more, call us at (703) 821-8200.