What is continuous monitoring?

How does continuous monitoring work?

Continuous monitoring automates a series of connected processes to collect and analyze data across an organization's IT environment. The constant nature means the system is always running, collecting and analyzing data.

Several core elements enable the operations of continuous monitoring systems, including the following:

Automated data collection

Continuous monitoring begins with automated data collection from various sources, including log files, network traces, application activity, intrusion detection systems and events. The data collection system often involves the use of agents that are installed alongside systems to collect information.

Automated analysis

Once data is collected, continuous monitoring systems analyze it in real time. The analysis includes comparing the observed data with established baselines and pattern recognition to identify outliers and potential risks. Automated analysis also helps prioritize issues based on severity, enabling faster remediation of critical vulnerabilities and performance problems.

Automated reporting and alerting

When the analysis identifies potential issues, the system can generate alerts. Those alerts can be configured based on predetermined conditions or thresholds. The overall system also provides dashboards and real-time reports that provide visibility of the system's status.

Automated response and incident response

Beyond alerting, many continuous monitoring systems can integrate with incident response workflows, allowing security teams to address identified threats quickly.

6 types of continuous monitoring

There are multiple types of continuous monitoring systems. Among the most common are the following:

• Network monitoring. These systems focus on networking gear's performance, availability and security, including routers, switches and firewalls.
• Application monitoring. Tracks software applications for performance and availability to help maintain uptime and positive user experience.
• Infrastructure monitoring. For infrastructure, continuous monitoring systems track utilization of resources such as the central processing unit (CPU), memory and disk space and monitor overall hardware health.
• User behavior monitoring. This monitoring class is also sometimes called user and entity behavior analytics. These systems monitor the behavior or actions of authenticated users and devices logged into a network to search for any potential anomalies outside a normal baseline.
• Compliance monitoring. Continuous monitoring is also widely used for compliance, commonly through continuous control monitoring technologies. These systems map control objectives to observed technical configurations, generating audit trails for compliance reporting.
• Security monitoring. This type focuses on threats, vulnerabilities and security events that could compromise an organization's data or systems.

What are the benefits of continuous monitoring?

Continuous monitoring provides multiple benefits for organizations. Continuous monitoring represents a proactive approach to IT management and security, focusing on preventing issues rather than just reacting to them after they occur.

Among the primary benefits of continuous monitoring include the following:

• Increased visibility. By constantly observing IT assets, organizations get better visibility into what's working and what's not.
• Enhanced security. With continuous monitoring, outliers that could be threats are detected faster than if data was only collected at periodic intervals, reducing the risk of security breaches and minimizing potential damage.
• Risk visualization. Real-time dashboards and reporting allow organizations to see system operations and potential risks in real time.
• Operational efficiency. Organizations that continuously monitor operations can identify areas of inefficiency and bottlenecks, improving response times and reducing mean time to recovery.
• Compliance automation. Maintaining and documenting compliance isn't easy. Continuous monitoring can help organizations automatically validate controls against compliance frameworks.
• User experience optimization. Monitoring can help to optimize the application and network delivery experience for users.
• Cost savings. The usage of continuous monitoring can potentially help prevent expensive breaches and reduce downtime costs

7 steps to implement continuous monitoring

There are several steps organizations should consider and follow to implement continuous monitoring.

The process of continuous monitoring benefits from a structured methodology with the following steps:

1. Identify assets. The first step is to identify assets and decide what to monitor. These can include relevant components and services. This step should include a risk assessment to determine the most critical assets and threats that pose the greatest danger. The key is to align the monitored assets with business functions.
2. Define monitoring goals. Simply observing traffic isn't the goal. The goal is to improve it in some way. That's why defining the objectives for continuous monitoring operations is critical. Define key risk indicators aligned with business objectives, such as mean time to detect security events or compliance gap closure rates.
3. Choose the tools. After understanding the assets to be monitored and the goals, the next step is to choose the right continuous monitoring tool. The right tool can easily integrate with existing assets and help the organization meet its goals.
4. Set up the monitoring system. Once a system is chosen, the next step is to set it up to collect all the logs, events and device telemetry properly. Be sure to validate and test that everything that should be monitored is delivering information into the system. Recording and establishing baselines for routine operations are essential during the initial setup phase.
5. Configure alerts. Once the system is set up, configuring alert thresholds is the next step. Alerts can be set up based on predetermined metrics or if outliers or deviations from established baselines are detected.
6. Train staff. Be sure to train staff using the system to understand alerts and use the continuous monitoring system.
7. Review and iterate. Devices and the threat landscape change. Have a plan to regularly review the system's efficacy and operations to ensure it meets objectives. Iterate and update as needed.

What are the challenges of continuous monitoring?

Continuous monitoring presents several challenges for organizations. Among the common challenges are the following:

• Data volume. Continuous monitoring generates large amounts of data that can potentially overwhelm storage capacity and create processing bottlenecks
• Integration complexity. Compatibility across different existing systems an organization might use can be complex. Modern IT ecosystems often include diverse technologies that must all be integrated into the monitoring framework
• Defining scope. It's not easy or possible to monitor everything, at least initially. Having a clear scope for what can be observed can often be challenging.
• Alert fatigue. Continuous monitoring can lead to an organization receiving more alerts, especially if prioritization and thresholds are not correctly configured.
• Ongoing maintenance. As technology landscapes change, continuously updating the system for changing profiles and threats is challenging.
• Data compliance. For organizations that use third-party services, where host data is stored can present compliance challenges.
• Data complexity. The volume of data isn't the only issue with data; managing and interpreting large volumes of data from multiple sources can be complex and require sophisticated monitoring tools and skilled personnel.

Examples of continuous monitoring

Continuous monitoring is not a theoretical, abstract construct; it has practical, real-world utility. There are real-world examples of continuous monitoring across different fields.

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is a core use case for continuous monitoring. Automated tools provide accurate time surveillance of IT systems and networks to detect potential security risks.

Among the many organizations that use continuous monitoring for cybersecurity are Hyperscalers and search engine giant Google. Google uses its Security Command Center to continuously monitor its cloud environment, providing real-time threat detection. The platform detects misconfigurations, web application vulnerabilities and external threats targeting Google Cloud resources, such as unauthorized behavior.

Software development

Software development is another primary use case for continuous monitoring. Ensuring that all components and operations in an application's development lifecycle are working correctly is critical. This is particularly important in DevOps environments, where rapid iteration and deployment are standard practice.

CircleCI, a leading continuous integration and delivery platform, uses continuous Datadog monitoring, a cloud-based platform that provides real-time updates on network, application and infrastructure performance. With the technology, CircleCI has eliminated the necessity for manual correlation of metrics, traces and logs when addressing incidents. The system also helps to enable visualization of metric spikes and patterns to identify and fix issues before customers are impacted.

Continuous monitoring tools and technologies

There are many different monitoring tools and technologies on the market today. Standalone tools exist for specific market segments -- such as cybersecurity, compliance and user behavior -- and large platform vendors perform multiple processes.

There is also an overlap between observability tools and continuous monitoring. In many respects, some vendors use the two terms almost interchangeably. Fundamentally, observability requires continuous monitoring to be effective, while continuous monitoring provides visibility into operations. The fundamental distinction is that observability technology also provides insights into how and why an issue occurs.

The following chart outlines the leading vendors in various categories based on industry reports from analyst firm Gartner.