The modern-day consumers’ hunger to have applications assists them to solve real-life problems keeps growing at a phenomenal rate. However, these consumers are barely forgiving when it comes to error-ridden applications. They will most likely drop an application immediately upon noticing a loophole in its functionality. As this desire keeps on growing, the pressure is on software developers to not only create quality software but also work to eliminate any errors in their applications.
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One of the greatest challenges your business has to brave is that modern-day applications are complex in that they rely on multi-layer and multi-tier systems. By concentrating on exception monitoring, developers can look at application performance monitoring from a more informed perspective. This makes the identification and elimination of vulnerabilities and errors easy.
Here is why you need to focus on exception monitoring:
Detect Problems Early
In a nutshell, an exception is typically an event that changes the normal flow of an application’s instructions. They can indicate issues in different application layers that range from stack overflows to network timeouts. Most application problems tend to build up gradually from a simple issue to a more complex one.
When used alone, infrastructure and application monitoring tools tend to use the different metrics to identify that something might be awry with the functioning of the program. Often, this information might not be sufficient enough to identify the source of the issue. As such, you risk waiting until the minor issues spawn into even more massive problems. By combining infrastructure and exception monitoring, your gain enough insights on the root cause of any problem that your app might be developing which allows you enough time to address it before it reaches the tipping point.
Prevent Cyber Criminals from Accessing Sensitive Information
Often, when an application fails, it leads to an exception which is displayed in the form of error messages. In the wrong hands, these detailed error messages have the potential to provide attackers with a bevy of information that can range from stack traces to private information and even passwords. This can further lead to buffer attacks and enumerations along with other security vulnerabilities.
Although well-designed code is meant to prevent any exceptions from going unattended, it might be tough to anticipate all exceptions that are likely to occur. As a result, being active in log monitoring and observing any exceptions can help you tackle them early and prevent the intrusion of hackers.
Identify the Intrusion by Hackers
In some cases, your application might have been hacked, but it will barely show any signs of an intrusion. Logs can be quite resourceful in providing enough information on the activities of hackers. As a result, paying attention to exceptions will help in determining the extent to which your application has been affected.
While the type of exception thrown will depend on the functionality of your application, looking out for abnormalities such as new error messages, bulk downloads, and even privacy violations will suffice. Such logs can help in the reconstruction of events which can help in both forensic research and recovering from a disaster.
Impact on the Performance of the Application
Often, your application will tend to throw an exception that might be harmless to its functionality. In fact, some of these exceptions are referred to as good exceptions. However, such situations often lead to stack trace propagation where your application pauses to access the stack and come up with enough information to create a stack trace.
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While the impact of a single event is barely significant to the performance of your application, large-scale events can lead to major lags. As a result, monitoring good exceptions shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Conclusion
Performance monitoring tools are invaluable when it comes to providing enough information on the health of your application. However, they work best when combined with exception monitoring tools. This will provide you with enough insights into the performance of your application. Commit to exception monitoring to identify looming application threats early.
