What are suspicious business network activities?

Monitoring network activity is difficult. You cannot watch everything all the time. When it comes to your business, you want to ensure that your network is secure. These business pros share their knowledge about suspicious activity, so you can quickly identify unauthorized moves, safeguarding your company.

Kyle MacDonald

Kyle MacDonald

Kyle MacDonald, Director of Operations, Force by Mojio.

Activity That Does Not Follow the Normal Protocol

Anytime you have unusual activities on your business network should be cause for concern. If you’re seeing irregular user activity, you might be seeing the work of a hacker. Normal activity, which follows the protocols that your company has laid out, would indicate that your network is secure. Activity that doesn’t follow normal protocol would indicate that someone outside your organization has gained access to your network.

Top Five Suspicious Activities

There are a few suspicious activities that you should watch out for in your business network. These include:

1. Unusual or unexpected activity from employees, partners, or customers. This could be something like unusual amounts of data being transferred, new devices appearing on the network, or strange user behavior.

2. Changes in configuration or security settings, especially if they happen without your knowledge or approval.

3. An increase in errors or warning messages from your security software. This could indicate that someone is trying to bypass your security measures.

4. Unexplained spikes in network traffic, particularly if they coincide with other suspicious activity.

5. Suspicious emails or messages, especially if they contain attachments or links.

Luke Fitzpatrick

Luke Fitzpatrick

Luke Fitzpatrick, Marketing Officer of Drsono.

Chris Stevenson

Chris Stevenson

Chris Stevenson, CEO, VirtualRealityRental Las Vegas.

Strange Login Timings, Locations, and Failed Attempts

Always monitor logins and login attempts. When it comes to your business network, there should be specific people with access. Knowing how many people have access and where they log in, you can identify login attempts from people without that specific access. Also, pay attention to the times these attempts occur, especially if authorized employees would only ever log in between certain hours of the day.

Changing or Increasing Network Access

Keep an eye on user access and database activity. You want to see who is accessing your network, from where, and if those things are changing or increasing in volume. Pay attention to network access at strange times of the day, multiple failed login attempts, and if those login attempts happen from unknown or strange remote locations. When it comes to network access, you should keep a list of who can have access so that you can easily identify when unauthorized people are gaining access.

Maria Britton

Maria Britton

Maria Britton, CEO, Trade Show Labs.

This is a crowdsourced article. Contributors' statements do not necessarily reflect the opinion of this website, other people, businesses, or other contributors.