When we talk about Plixer’s Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostic (NPMD) platform, one of the key features that we highlight is that our solutions use network flow data instead of relying upon the data derived from packet capture. To understand why we’re so passionate about this unique differentiator, it’s useful to understand what network flow data is and how it benefits enterprise NetOps and SecOps teams.
What is network flow data?
Network flow data is found in all types of enterprise network infrastructure, including switches, routers, firewalls, packet brokers, security tools, network monitoring systems, and more. This type of data is one of the most valuable assets for enterprise networks. Still, it often goes unused because most NPMD solutions rely on packet capture technology. However, network flow data often provides more actionable insights than the data derived from packets.
If you use packets, then you already know the resources they require. With probes or other collection agents, hardware and storage requirements make packets incredibly expensive to deploy across your entire network. Thus, most organizations are forced to limit packet capture to avoid the expense. The result is that probes are generally only deployed at the perimeter of the network, which means you’re blind to compromises and issues happening on the interior of your network. Without placing packet capture infrastructure across your entire network, which is both expensive and unnecessarily resource-intensive, you will not all north/south and east/west traffic.
How does network flow data benefit NetOps & SecOps teams?
Using network flow data instead of relying on probes and packet-based technology, the Plixer NPMD platform uniquely bridges cloud and on-premises environments to provide real-time, end-to-end network visibility. Likewise, the use of network flow data enables the Plixer NPMD platform to support end-to-end network visibility to detect and correlate anomalies, interpret patterns and trends, and understand network and application performance.
Importantly, relying on network flow data promotes collaboration between NetOps and SecOps teams. NetSecOps is a growing trend that has many benefits for enterprises, including:
- Ensuring minimal downtime by preventing outages, as well as resolving outages as quickly as possible
- Closing the security skills gap with existing resources
- Applying the deep knowledge that NetOps teams have for applications, protocols, and networking to security
- Reducing organizational risk and time to resolution, as both teams now speak the same language and work collaboratively
- Decreasing complexity and cost while improving efficiencies
