Network Visibility - Network visibility is an integral part of cybersecurity.

Network visibility is an integral part of cybersecurity.

The network should be well-visible, stable, secure, and efficient. Effective network visibility should have a unified architecture across the company’s infrastructure, ensuring full traffic visibility and being adaptable to operate in all types of physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

Achieving sufficient network visibility is becoming increasingly difficult for most organizations. Networks are more complex, have more endpoints, data volumes, and security threats than ever before.

Network security and monitoring are of great importance due to the increasing amount of data and growing cybersecurity concerns. Comprehensive network visibility is a necessity for most companies. Unfortunately, many companies, despite being aware of the threat, do not achieve their network visibility goals, and network blind spots have become a serious problem for organizations.

Network visibility encompasses many areas, and tools are used for precise and continuous monitoring of network traffic, application monitoring, network performance, network resource management, and big data analysis. This, in turn, requires effective and scalable data collection, aggregation, distribution, and delivery.

Network traffic provides all the necessary information about what is happening in the company’s infrastructure. When choosing the right equipment, we should look at whether the devices will provide us with all the necessary information and not just fragments of it.

An important element of the network is its bandwidth. Expanded networks, increasing amounts of data, and security tools slow down network performance. Therefore, those responsible for security should simultaneously protect the network and improve its performance.

Choosing the best network monitoring device depends on its flexibility and connectivity options. Additional features such as De-duplication, Packet Slicing, Application Session Filtering, Metadata and NetFlow IPFIX Generation, Masking, and SSL Decryption can also be useful.

No security system is perfect, but in the event of a security breach, better network visibility can speed up the identification and containment of the threat, reducing the time, effort, and costs associated with mitigating the incident.

Let’s remember the basic principles:

Security With insight into network traffic, potential threats and security gaps can be detected and responded to more quickly and effectively.

Network Performance Understanding the types and amounts of traffic flowing through the network allows for identifying and resolving issues that may cause slowdowns or other problems. It helps identify bottlenecks, bandwidth usage, and other network performance issues.

Compliance Many organizations are required to comply with various regulations and standards, such as HIPAA or PCI-DSS. Network visibility can help ensure that the organization meets these requirements by providing insight into the types of data being transmitted and security controls.

Troubleshooting Network visibility solutions can help identify the cause of network problems (e.g., network outages, connectivity issues) and quickly resolve them, reducing downtime and improving overall network reliability.

Business Continuity Appropriate tools can provide insight into the overall state and performance of the network, which is essential to ensure that business-critical applications and services are available and running smoothly.

Best Network Performance Monitoring Tools in 2024 (according to Obkio)

Overview by Category

Pure-Play Network Performance Monitoring Solutions:

In the NPM solutions category, companies specialize in network performance monitoring using agent-based solutions and synthetic tests, leveraging application aging, infrastructure, and network monitoring to diagnose and resolve issues in real-time.

Unlike IT management platforms, pure-play NPM solutions focus solely on NPM and offer advanced analytics and reporting capabilities that help organizations make informed decisions about their network infrastructure. These solutions often differ in complexity and the level of services offered.

    Obkio
    ThousandEyes
    AppNeta
    Catchpoint
    LiveAction
    Kentik

Alternative NPM Solutions

Built-in Monitoring Features Offered by Network Providers

Built-in monitoring features offered by network providers may lack adequate visibility, alerting capabilities, and troubleshooting tools, leading customers to eventually realize the need for external monitoring solutions.

    Meraki Insight
    Viptela
    Fortinet
    VMware Aria Operations
    Mikrotik

IT Management Platforms and Network Monitoring Tools

IT management platforms are large software platforms designed to manage various aspects of an organization’s IT infrastructure. NPM is a subset of network monitoring, which is a subset of infrastructure monitoring, which in turn is a subset of IT management platforms.

As a result, NPM may not offer the same functionality as standalone NPM solutions. Implementing NPM in larger suites can be complex, costly, and time-consuming with a low adoption rate of NPM functionality.

    Cisco DNA Center
    Solarwinds
    Progress WhatsUpGold
    Icinga
    LogicMonitor
    ScienceLogic
    ManageEngine
    Auvik
    PRTG Network Monitor

Including Open-Source Solutions

    Nagios
    OpenNMS
    Zabbix
    LibreNMS

Enterprise Top Global 2000

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Packages

Comprehensive observability platforms designed for managing the performance of infrastructure and applications, with advanced monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimization features for complex multi-layered environments.

While these platforms offer NPM capabilities, it is important to note that they primarily focus on providing insights to application owners and operators and may not be suitable for network engineers looking for a standalone NPM solution.

    Elastic

    Splunk

    Dynatrace

    New Relic

    DataDog

    AppDynamics

Packet Capture Technology

Packet-based technology solutions that require specialized knowledge in data analysis, significant hardware resources for data collection and storage, and may not be accessible or scalable for most companies.

    ExtraHop

    Gigamon

    Viavi Solutions

    Netscout

    Ixia

    SkyLight

21.05.2024

--------------------------------
Network visibility, cybersecurity, efficient network, stable network, infrastructure architecture, network endpoints, network dead spots, network resource management, network traffic monitoring, application monitoring, network performance, dataset analysis, network bandwidth, network traffic, mitigation hacking incidents, De-duplication, Packet Slicing, Application Session Filtering, Metadata and NetFlow IPFIX Generation, Masking, SSL Decryption, Pure-Play, NPM