Just got promoted to the position of IT administrator within the company you work for? While exciting, it also means you are now responsible for the infrastructure that keeps a multi-million dollar enterprise running day in and out.
Thankfully, your role is made much easier these days by a variety of software tools that can assist you in carrying out your duties.
IP tracking, user activity monitoring, and the active management of firewalls are just a few tools that can help an IT administrator.
Below, we’ll share our favorite management tools that can make the lives of an overworked IT administrator that much better.
1) IP monitoring utilities
While some employees carry entire departments on their back through the enormous workloads they assume, others coast along.
Using the web to mostly browse Facebook, they only shift to work materials when they suspect a manager is lurking nearby.
If you are getting complaints from others about this issue, you can get an accurate picture of what employee are doing with their time online by making use of IP monitoring software.
Every employee accesses the network through their own IP address, allowing their activity to be logged by an IP monitoring program.
Whether they are researching marketing techniques or spending hours trolling Buzzfeed for the latest memes, this program will know.
With the ability to create reports based on what they find, the manager for the department in question will then be able to meet with offenders and give them a chance to shape up or ship out.
2) Audit trail software
Frequently, employee malfeasance online is limited to unproductive web surfing. Sometimes, however, someone in your employ goes rogue and ends up leaking sensitive info to outsiders for motives ranging from profit to revenge.
Figure out who is up to no good before it is too late by making use of audit trail software. This program allows you to track movements within your intranet, flagging problem behaviors that could indicate the occurrence of criminal activity.
With no shortage of bad actors out there who constantly look to steal ideas and customer financial info to enrich themselves at the expense of others, the ability to act quickly can save your business and reputation untold amounts of damage.
3) Bandwidth monitoring programs
If network speeds appear to be slower than usual, it’s because certain activities can hog the overall amount of access a company has to the web.
The thoughtless employee who torrents movies from their desk uses a lot more bandwidth than the average worker who uses it for normal web surfing and VOIP.
Bandwidth monitoring utilities will allow you to see which users are using more capacity than others, allowing you to investigate the matter further.
4) Firewalls
The biggest concern for IT administrators these days are massive attacks mounted by cyber criminals.
If they get in, they’ll steal your customer’s financial account numbers, insider info, and other vital data. In short, a big raid can spell the end for your business.
To avoid this from happening to your company, maintaining a strong firewall is imperative, as it will prevent these intrusions from successfully breaching your servers.