Today, having a web site involves more than just advertising product to potential customers. Aside from critical internal applications, a business depends highly on their external network hardware such as web and email servers. The external web server is often a business’ bread and butter. Down time on an ecommerce web server can mean a loss in thousands of dollars for even a small business.
Without a good network monitoring system, your web site could be down and you would not know it unless a customer called to complain. By then, it could be too late as the damage would already be done and the eBay algorithm would already be sending customers to your killer site.
Network monitoring services can alert you within minutes when problems arise. It can send you notifications through email as well. For a small fee, you can have someone come and monitor your system from time to time.
Monitoring services can also be important for larger businesses. Chain stores, for example, are often on line 24/7. Should something happen to one of their servers, they can quickly get it back up and running.
Services can also be monitored by email. You can actually monitor the emails that are being sent by your customers. They are watching and recording all their emails so that you can see what is going on.
One of the more interesting services is that of Trace Management. This is where a system is setup to actually monitor all internet activity including both email and web. Things like web sites that are read, emails that are written, and pictures that are uploaded are all monitored to ensure that rules are being followed and that no illegal content is being distributed.
If you are using other people’s work, or that of someone else on your behalf, and you don’t want the monitoring to be seen by others, then you will need to place a firewall between the network and the web site.
When you are checking out a potential new customer, you want to make sure that they are downloading the proper files and that they are allowed to view the proper sites. If you are running an e-commerce website, you will need a system in place to ensure that this happens.
It is a good idea to check the computer’s time zone with the time difference in that they should be allowed to access the network. Maybe it is only advised at times of day when employees are not around to help out.
It is a good idea to set up computers to self-serve. This is when the customer and the seller is in one location and the buyer and seller is in another. Basically, this means that you assure that there will not be too much temptation for buyers and sellers to break the rules.
The computer firewall can be set up to allow the user to decide who can access their computer and when. However, it is set up to block illegal attempts to gain access to the network. Exactly what is considered illegal is another question. One thing is sure, it is not good enough to let the user decide and are not able to sight the consequences of their actions.
It is clear that the Internet has a lot of dangers in it. However, due to its nature, it will always be a target for hackers. However, if you will make sure that your site is safe from these people, you will create more trust for your customers. More customers will enjoy your product and there will be less people who will be viewing your site for malicious reasons.
