Network visibility refers to the ability to monitor and understand the activities, performance, and security of a network in real-time. It involves having comprehensive insights into the data flowing across the network, including user activity, device performance, and application behavior.
Key aspects of network visibility include:
Network visibility is utilized by various stakeholders, including IT departments, network administrators, and security teams. They rely on visibility tools to monitor network performance, troubleshoot issues, and detect security threats. Additionally, business leaders use insights from network visibility to understand how performance impacts operations and customer experience. By leveraging this data, organizations can enhance reliability, improve security, and optimize resource utilization.
In its inception, network monitoring technology was limited to basic traffic analysis – and required significant manual effort. As networks grew more complex with the rise of cloud computing, IoT devices, and remote work, the demand for real-time insights increased and more sophisticated monitoring tools hit the market, offering analytic capabilities and features like automated alerts and AI-driven insights. In recent years, the focus on cybersecurity has heightened the need for enhanced visibility and we're seeing integrated solutions that combine performance monitoring with security analytics. Today, network visibility not only helps in performance optimization but also plays a crucial role in identifying and mitigating security threats, making it essential for modern business operations.
Here are some key challenges of effective network visibility:
Let's look at how NIKSUN solves all these challenges for network visibility.
Problem: With the constant increases in data volume and network complexity, many tools aren't up to the job.
Solution: NIKSUN's solution is designed to handle data volume and network complexity at any scale, so that no matter how much you throw at it, it's always comprehensive and lighting fast. It works with any infrastructure (on-prem, cloud, virtual, or hybrid) and with any number of users – from the one-person user in the smallest business to the thousand-person user (and beyond) in complex enterprise or government agency settings, scaling to multi-Tbps and tens of petabytes without dropping a single packet or other data type. This extreme scalability is why NIKSUN is the chosen primary provider of Full Packet Capture for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in the Defense Information System Agency (DISA)'s network protection program.
Problem: Real-time monitoring can be resource-intensive.
Solution: NIKSUN's unique platform is resource-efficient. Capable of ingesting your data from all available sources (firewalls, AAA systems, routers, switches, cloud, virtual infrastructure, web servers, databases, endpoints, networks, services, tools, etc.), regardless of the format (logs, metrics, SNMP, flows, packets, and more), NIKSUN's solution brings this data, in real-time, into one cross-correlated database that transforms it into intelligence to fuel the holistic, seamless insight you need for your entire infrastructure. Critically, this intelligence is presented in a form that is usable by everyone from the C-suite to SMEs and analysts for a variety of use cases – security and SecOps, network management and NetOps, DevOps, application management, support, forensics, compliance, and more. And, unlike many, NIKSUN's platform doesn't require expertise or extensive training. Designed to be installed in a few clicks, it immediately delivers end-to-end, network-to-application intelligence via high-level posture dashboards with the ability to drill deep – all the way to the raw data or root cause – to significantly speed up your Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR). And it's remarkably affordable, with simple pricing plans, world-class support, and no hidden fees.
Problem: Integrating all the tools you need for effective monitoring can be a headache.
Solution: NIKSUN delivers a remedy with our one-stop solution for security, performance, availability, and compliance – so you don't need a bunch of tools to worry about integrating. Our end-to-end solution works on any platform and quickly provides critical insights, including the scale of daily cyber-attacks on your infrastructure, providing the intelligence needed to stop threats before they succeed. Our platform also identifies compliance issues, helping you meet standards like NIST, CMMC, HIPAA, FINRA, or PCI effortlessly. And it detects network or application performance incidents in real-time, offering the root cause as incidents occur. NIKSUN's platform has been successfully implemented across organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, effectively replacing a multitude of legacy tools with its powerful capabilities to ingest, analyze, and correlate data and transform it into intelligence, empowering users without the burden of skyrocketing operational expenses.
Problem: The tool you're using for monitoring can introduce vulnerabilities.
Solution: NIKSUN makes it easy to monitor worry-free, with a passive approach that ensures you are able to watch your infrastructure no matter what happens to it. Additionally, NIKSUN's solution leverages robust architecture that delivers the highest level of security to meet or exceed U.S. Department of Defense Information Networks (DODIN) Approved Products List (APL) and Common Criteria standards, including Role Based Access Control (RBAC) so you can ensure each analyst in your organization has just the view of the data you want to give them.
Problem: Cyber threats are constantly changing, becoming harder to detect and predict; “zero-day” exploits take advantage of unaddressed vulnerabilities.
Solution: What matters here is speed and coverage. NIKSUN's all-in-one platform encompasses all modern security alarming techniques – such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), anomaly detection, AI/ML-behavior and heuristics based alarming, threat intelligence (TI / TIP), and content analysis – in one comprehensive monitoring solution, boosting your ability to detect and tackle sophisticated threats. Designed to alarm on multiple fronts and ingest a wide variety of data sources, NIKSUN can spot a broad spectrum of attacks with incredible speed for your entire infrastructure. Critically, NIKSUN's lossless capture of ALL the data across your infrastructure means even zero-day exploits can be discovered, with the ability to unmask “unknown-unknown” threats and even conduct retrospective analysis.
NIKSUN is the recognized world leader in empowering organizations to Know the Unknown®. Since 1997, we have been committed to delivering the most innovative solutions for securing and optimizing the networks of over a thousand customers including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and service providers.
Our industry leading suite of scalable, forensics-based cyber security and network performance monitoring products provide customers with in-depth and actionable insight into security threats, performance issues, and compliance risks. NIKSUN's patented real-time analysis and recording technology is the industry's most comprehensive solution for securing and maintaining dynamic network infrastructure.