A leading provider of network testing and security solutions, Ixia has recently announced the findings of it first Ixia Security Report, a summation of 2016’s biggest security events including findings from Ixia’s Application and Threat Intelligence (ATI) Research Center.
The survey highlighted increasing complexity and opacity of enterprise networks, creating security challenges for a majority of IT professionals.
Ixia surveyed over 220 senior IT staff at enterprise to determine what role visibility plays in helping IT professionals manage and secure their complex and heterogeneous networks.
The results highlighted how network visibility can help IT professionals protect their organisations against threats and identify emerging issues, as well as gain visibility into cloud environment s and encrypted traffic.
When asked how network visibility ranked as a priority in their IT program in 2017, 61 per cent of respondents named it as either their Number one priority or a top priority. Other keys are as follows:
Visibility is key to breach discovery: More than half 54 per cent of respondents indicated that they most often discover a security breach through their network visibility solution. Forensic investigation was cited as the main method for breach discovery by 30 per cent, and contact by a third party by 19 per cent
Visibility central to network monitoring and protection: A large number (54 per cent) of respondents mentioned operating six or more network segment, but monitoring only half of them. Of the 40 per cent of enterprises surveyed that handle more than 10,000 customer records, less than 10 per cent actively monitor and protect their network.
Visibility critical to revealing potential threats: when asked how visibility could help improve their security posture, 56 per cent or respondents stated they want visibility into encrypted traffic on their networks, and 59 per cent want to be able to identify applications requiring inspection. 31 per cent wanted visibility into public clouds, and 29 per cent wanted visibility into private cloud environments. More than 50 per cent of the organisation surveyed use more than five security appliances, yet only 36 per cent of respondents protect those security appliances with an external bypass.
Cloud visibility critical and security concerns: 76 per cent of respondents were very concerned or concerned about security in their cloud environment. The top security concern with the cloud adoption was loss of control over network data (56 per cent) and being able to achieve full visibility across their network (47 per cent).
Defeating DDoS attack: As the threat of DDoS continues to rise , especially following the attacks of unprecedented scale launched using the Mirai botnet, 50 per cent of respondents said network visibility solutions would help protect their organisation against DDoS attacks, with further 30%saying that it would help somewhat.
“Most enterprises today are struggling with network blind spots caused by increases in encrypted traffic on their networks and migrations to public and private cloud environments. They also need to get better visibility across their rapidly-expanding network estates to address performance issues and mitigate threats,” said Murali Ramalingam, country head, sales, India at Ixia.
“The reality is that security and analytics tools are only as good as the data they are seeing. As such, the only way to truly address these common and widespread challenges is with a strong visibility architecture. Ixia’s visibility solutions help eliminate these challenges, and enable customers to fully realise their investments in their existing and monitoring tools.”
