Failing to Prepare Means You're Preparing to Fail

Does visibility really matter when it comes to securing your network? It does. In fact, it’s actually a very big deal!

Everywhere we turn, there are cameras that help protect our families, homes and businesses. We see them on front porches in the form of doorbells, in the stores, restaurants, and stadiums we visit, and along the roads we travel. We somehow feel safer knowing we can see danger coming before it reaches our front step.

But, what about your network? How do you see the bad guys coming and how can you stop them before they gain access to your network and do you harm? In much the same way we protect our family and home, it starts with visibility. Because you can’t protect your network or yourself from the threats you don’t see. Security cameras won’t give you visibility into network traffic but implementing a well-designed visibility architecture will expose gaps and weaknesses so you can prevent dangerous blind spots that leave an open door for cybercriminals.

A visibility architecture consists of network taps, bypass switches, network packet brokers (NPBs), and intelligent NPB software stacks like Keysight’s NetStack, PacketStack, and SecureStack that perform advanced filtering. One function of intelligent context-aware filtering is ensuring the right data is delivered to the right tool at the right time. When security tools become overloaded from processing irrelevant or duplicate data, they must work overtime which is inefficient and costly. If a DDoS attack floods your network with more traffic than it can handle, your tools are forced to really kick into high gear while hackers eagerly stand by waiting to exploit these vulnerabilities.

See Dangerous Threats BEFORE They Destroy Your Network!

Most network traffic today is encrypted and hackers take full advantage of this. SSL/TLS encryption is a double-edged sword and somewhat of a mixed blessing in that the same encryption used to keep data safe is something cybercriminals now use against you. Serious security breaches often occur when hackers are able to gain entry into your network by concealing ransomware, malware and viruses within encrypted data packets. You need all the security benefits the latest TLS protocol offers but still must be able to inspect encrypted traffic to uncover hidden threats. Deploying NPBs like Keysight’s Vision X with SecureStack to perform SSL/TLS decryption is one way to prevent cybercriminals from hiding dangerous threats within your encrypted traffic. Letting the NPB take care of all decryption enables you to gain complete visibility across your network while offloading this process intensive task from your security tools without impacting performance. NPBs are not all created equal, so choose one that can effectively decrypt all SSL/TLS data packets while running at full scale without missing or dropping packets along the way. It only takes one miss to cause big problems.

When faced with the choice between strong security, optimal performance, and complete network visibility, you can choose all three. Read how.

As networks become more complex, it cannot be stressed enough just how critical a fully integrated network monitoring and security solution is for 24/7 visibility into ALL network traffic. Just as important is to include network test solutions in your design to take additional proactive measures for simulating breaches, attacks, and intense load testing.

Benjamin Franklin once stated, “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” and his wise words still stand true today even in this fast-paced world of constant change.

Start now by downloading the new “Distributed Network Monitoring & Security for Dummies – Keysight Special Edition” eBook. It’s chock full of information, helpful tips, and warnings for avoiding pitfalls. You really can beat hackers at their own game, but you must prepare today so you’re not caught off guard by tomorrow’s next big threat.

Learn more about Keysight’s entire network visibility, security, and test solutions at:
www.Keysight.com/find/network-solutions.com

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