As companies move towards a flexible, remote work environment, the demand for VPN services has increased considerably. This need to ramp up VPN infrastructures in such a short time comes with its fair share of operational problems and security concerns. Over purchasing VPN capacity would put a dent in the IT budget while under purchasing would result in loss of productivity.
Apart from the connectivity issues, IT administrators also have to closely monitor for network attacks, as hackers tend to target remote workers specifically. The IT teams in companies leveraging a remote workforce have a challenging task ahead of them: they need to facilitate a secure and well-planned VPN infrastructure to ensure a hassle-free work environment.
VPN logs provide critical traffic and security details, which can help IT administrators understand VPN capacity requirements and the security posture in their enterprise. ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer is VPN log monitoring tool that helps track VPN users in real time, monitor VPN user activity for anomalous behavior, and report on security attacks carried out in the network. The VPN reports in Firewall Analyzer help network administrators gain complete visibility over their VPN traffic and firewall logs by providing visibility on a number of metrics.
Let’s take a closer look at some of Firewall Analyzer’s VPN reports.
Employee usage statistics: The VPN usage of specific users and their unique session count is crucial for planning VPN bandwidth and capacity. Firewall Analyzer monitors user-level VPN bandwidth usage and provides a list of users utilizing the maximum VPN bandwidth. This list helps you keep a tab on VPN usage at the individual user level.
VPN sessions and peak hour utilization: Firewall Analyzer not only helps you keep tabs on the number of active VPN sessions and the session history, but it also identifies peak hour utilization. These stats help you identify the busiest hours of the day and plan your infrastructure accordingly. Obtaining stats on VPN bandwidth demand is useful for calculating further scalability.
Device-based connection and usage trends: The ability to view VPN connection and usage statistics for a specific network security device is extremely critical in optimizing your VPN infrastructure. With Firewall Analyzer’s device-based VPN reports, you can easily get the connection, user, and session details for a specific network security device.
VPN bandwidth consumption and login status: Firewall Analyzer inspects all the IPs utilizing VPNs as well as their individual bandwidth consumption. This helps you zero in on IPs that consume inordinate levels of bandwidth and restrict their consumption in the future.
Being able to view the destinations and URLs your VPN clients visit is vital. With Firewall Analyzer, you can do this while easily classifying URLs as business-critical or non-critical. You can also block non-critical URLs, and save valuable bandwidth. Apart from this, you can also identify failed user logins, which helps in proactively solving VPN connection issues.
VPN bandwidth trends: Studying VPN bandwidth trends helps you anticipate consumption levels during various times of the day, and plan bandwidth capacity needs. Firewall Analyzer’s VPN Trend report gives you the ability to track these consumption trends and plan your VPN infrastructure well in advance.
Security and bandwidth alerts: Alarms and alert notifications play a critical role in identifying traffic anomalies in your VPN infrastructure. With Firewall Analyzer, you can set bandwidth triggers as per your requirements, and alert notifications will be sent directly to your email or phone via SMS.
With these reports, network administrators can easily plan an efficient VPN infrastructure that provides the ideal platform for remote employees to work without any hassle. A well-planned VPN infrastructure enables your company to retain its productivity and gain a competitive edge in today’s challenging marketplace. Download a free trial of Firewall Analyzer, and get the best out of your VPN infrastructure.
