What Is Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)?

Remote monitoring and management (RMM) is the technology you use to observe and maintain your IT infrastructure and Internet of Things (IoT) smart devices remotely. Monitoring is critical to ensure your organization uses IT systems efficiently, to prevent outages, and to determine system state. Administrators can use RMM solutions to observe real-time utilization for CPU, memory, and networking interfaces, and other infrastructure resources. Traditionally, administrators used RMM software to remotely monitor and configure physical hardware resources stored in an organization’s on-premises data center. Modern RMM solutions support both on-premises and cloud infrastructure monitoring and remote location device management to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

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While specific management capabilities vary, modern RMM solutions are all generally capable of performing several core functions.

Remote access

Remote monitoring and management is specifically designed for remote devices, which may be separated over the internet.

Automated patch management functions

Administrators can automatically deploy operating system and application updates to endpoint devices, with integrated patch management.

Asset and inventory management

RMM tools continuously monitor hardware status, software versions, overall device health, and licensing compliance across all managed endpoint devices.

Automation and scripting

Using RMM tools, IT teams can run custom scripts, such as in Python or PowerShell, across thousands of devices simultaneously. This allows teams to resolve common system errors and perform routine tasks at scale, without device-by-device manual intervention.

Custom alerting

Administrators can set specific system performance thresholds to trigger automated notifications. This helps you identify and investigate minor anomalies promptly before they escalate into system-wide outages, and perform remote support.

Remote endpoint monitoring and management software offers many benefits.

Improved security posture

Remote management makes it easier to proactively enforce security policies on your endpoints and network infrastructure, and decrease response times for security incidents. For example, RMM can monitor firewalls, detect unauthorized access, or manage antivirus software on remote systems. They can also perform upgrades and patch management to ensure all networked devices are secure. In combination with an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution or SIEM solution (Security Information and Event Management), this offers a broad security capability.

Proactive remote troubleshooting

System administrators and IT admins can use RMM services to access endpoint devices from a centralized system for proactive issue detection and management. Remote access helps them troubleshoot and fix connected devices without having to travel to the device. More importantly, RMM shifts IT departments from a reactive “break-fix” operational model to a proactive management model. When using predictive analytics and real-time alerts, teams can prevent costly downtime from occurring in the first place by identifying device inconsistencies that warrant investigation.

Cost savings and hardware ROI

RMM technology removes the need for on-site visits and travel, which helps to reduce downtime. Proactive monitoring also helps you identify system anomalies before they cause a hardware failure. That can extend the lifespan of endpoint devices and increase the return on investment (ROI) of hardware. A good RMM solution also minimizes labor costs by reducing the need for extensive on-site IT teams.

Enhanced productivity

You can perform routine maintenance tasks, proactive monitoring, and network management from a single RMM dashboard. Real-time monitoring provides a clear picture of the current health of your IT systems. Accessing your devices remotely saves manual labor and travel, which helps to optimize your overall system and operational efficiency.

Remote monitoring and management software helps ensure optimal device performance and monitoring across your network. Here are some of its primary use cases.

Small and medium business IT management

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) typically do not have extensive in-house IT teams. They rely on RMM software to monitor their systems and devices more efficiently, from a single location, using a small team. RMM can provide insights on all endpoints, including laptops, servers, desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. The flexibility of RMM tools makes real-time monitoring and alert detection cost-effective for SMBs.

Managed service providers

A managed service provider (MSP) offers outsourced IT services to other businesses. These services could be anything from cybersecurity management to cloud optimization solutions. Remote monitoring and management are standard services MSPs provide, as many client organizations don’t have extensive in-house teams to manage their diverse IT assets. Some MSPs also offer to manage backups and implement disaster recovery solutions for their customers.

IoT sensor management

RMM tools allow organizations to manage thousands of IoT sensors at scale from a central location. For example, IoT fleet administrators can easily:

• Monitor equipment’s metadata and set policy changes, with service alerts to stay informed about device configuration changes or unusual behaviors

• Perform bulk updates, patch management, and automatic updates

• Create logical groups of devices to organize and target the fleet for remote actions, such as all environmental sensors in a specific building

• Understand device states and optimize device search and identification

RMM agents inherently require elevated, system-level privileges to run administrative tasks on endpoint devices. That makes it important to maintain a high level of security for your RMM system itself.

If an RMM central server experiences an incident, third parties could gain access to connected devices. IT administrators should enforce security policies on their RMM systems to control for these security risks:

Access controls

Implement the principle of least privilege. Only give administrators and users the exact level of system access necessary to perform their specific roles. An RMM solution will likely require the highest levels of permissions in an organization.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Apply multi-factor authentication (MFA) to RMM tool administrative accounts to prevent unauthorized access to the centralized management dashboard and tool sets.

Data encryption

Ensure that all data transmitted between the remote endpoint agents and the central RMM server is encrypted and transmitted with secure protocols. This will help protect sensitive telemetry, user data, and configuration details from interception.

How RMM software works changes depending on whether you use the traditional RMM model or the modern RMM model.

Traditional RMM software

When you use traditional RMM software, you install an RMM agent onto the device you want to monitor. The RMM agent will collect data about the device over time, including its performance, hardware status, network information, and operating system. The RMM agent sends all the information it collects to a centralized system. The central system tracks data and creates reports for viewing. If there are any outliers in performance or security events, it also alerts the administrators.

Administrators access the connected device through the centralized platform. They can troubleshoot, perform updates, and load patches without having physical contact with the device.

Modern RMM software

With the rise of cloud-based technology, modern RMM systems now collect data from cloud servers and APIs without having individual agents on every connected device. They collect information from cloud environments and other sources simultaneously using connectors. This approach pulls information from the entire IT environment instead of just the select devices with the installed agent. Cloud-based infrastructure thus provides real-time insight into the performance and security of everything connected to the cloud.

Like the traditional solution, administrators still access all information from a centralized dashboard. They can troubleshoot, manage, configure, analyze data, and update cloud-based resources from this dashboard if necessary.

The main advantage modern RMM software has is its scalability. Cloud-based RMM solutions can scale with the business, making them a good match for companies that are growing or have changing needs.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a powerful solution for monitoring your cloud environments. Amazon CloudWatch is a fully managed service that monitors resources and applications on AWS, on premises, and in other clouds.

With Amazon CloudWatch, you can do the following and more:

• Collect, access, and analyze your application data and resources with powerful visualization tools

• Consolidate data from AWS cloud services and third-party sources into a unified store

• Troubleshoot problems with actionable insights suggested by the CloudWatch dashboard

Combine CloudWatch with AWS Systems Manager for centralized operations management, automated patching, and visibility across your node infrastructure.

If your organization manages a large fleet of IoT devices and sensors, you can use AWS IoT Device Management. You can register, organize, remotely monitor, and manage IoT devices at scale and automatically send aggregate information to CloudWatch. You can also monitor the aggregate state of your fleet over time.

Get started with remote monitoring and management on AWS by creating a free account today.