endpointmonitoring

Endpoint monitoring is the practice of continuously observing devices that connect to a network to ensure availability, performance, and security. Endpoints include desktops, laptops, servers, mobile devices, and IoT. Monitoring focuses on both the operational health of the device and its software environment, providing visibility beyond the network itself.

Data is collected through software agents installed on endpoints or through agentless methods that query devices or use network telemetry. Common data types include uptime and health metrics (CPU, memory, disk, battery), network connectivity, process and service status, application inventory, patch levels, and security events. Telemetry is centralized for analysis and alerting, enabling comparison against baselines and historical trends.

There are two broad approaches: agent-based monitoring with lightweight software on each endpoint, and agentless monitoring that uses existing protocols (such as WMI, SSH, or SNMP) to collect data. Monitoring can be polling-based or event-driven, and may integrate with other systems such as SIEMs, IT service management tools, or endpoint detection and response solutions to correlate device health with security events.

Benefits of endpoint monitoring include faster detection of outages and degraded performance, improved visibility into user experience, and support for proactive maintenance and security posture through visibility into patch status and configuration changes. Use cases span IT operations, capacity planning, incident response, and compliance reporting.

Challenges include privacy considerations on personal devices, data volume and noise, configuration drift, maintaining agents, access controls, and scalability. Best practices involve defining meaningful metrics and baselines, setting appropriate alert thresholds, enforcing role-based access, ensuring data governance and protection, and aligning monitoring with organizational IT governance frameworks.