Powerful Network and Security Monitoring for the Midsize Business

Transcription

1 Powerful Network and Security Monitoring for the Midsize usiness Visibility into network traffic is crucial for IT operations to maintain security. Sponsored by eook: Powerful Monitoring for the Midsize usiness

2 Introduction Whether it s at a retailer where several million customer credit cards numbers have been stolen. Or it s at a government agency where Social Security numbers have been exposed. Or even a major movie studio where sensitive company documents and s have been made public. The news couldn t be escaped as almost every other headline screamed one thing: ata breach nd while it s been the high profile breaches that have made the headlines, these big enterprises haven t been the only victims of vicious hackers or corporate espionage. No, the majority of companies that have been breached aren t big enough to make the headlines. They are the regional health centers or the smaller businesses trying to operate on leaner budgets with smaller staffs especially in the IT department. What these companies need is visibility into network traffic that monitoring can afford them. The problem is that network monitoring often requires equipment that these companies can t afford to buy or staff they can t afford to hire. That s because, traditionally, to build a robust monitoring architecture required racks of new blades that had to be installed and configured by a series of different experts. What s needed is a better solution, hardware that s easier to install and manage. eook: Powerful Monitoring for the Midsize usiness 2

3 The Need for Visibility has Never een Greater With the explosion of business transactions flowing through the network and the growth of sensitive information stored in a company s data centers or in the cloud there is a need to ensure network performance and security monitoring is in place. ustomers trust that businesses are keeping their personal information both private and safe. Not only can non-compliant companies face fines and lawsuits, they could also have to deal with extremely unhappy customers and that could mean a damaged reputation and impact future revenue. ut even with cyberattacks becoming everyday problems, an overwhelming number of midsize businesses are not monitoring their network traffic appropriately. Why? ecause they don t believe the stories they see about security breaches or hacking will happen to them. ecause they outsourced the handling of and their security to someone else. ecause they believe network monitoring is too expensive and built for larger and more complex environments. Well, they re in for a rude awakening. Midsize organizations are just as likely to be the victims of an expensive security breach. Monitoring can help these midsize businesses mitigate risk. It is not a matter of if a network crisis will affect these businesses, but when. Or worse it unknowingly has. Over the next few chapters we will explain how network monitoring is used within the midsize organization, how it can be a competitive advantage and why these businesses should care about planning their monitoring architecture today for the business they want to be tomorrow. eook: Powerful Monitoring for the Midsize usiness 3

4 The Monitoring hallenge for Midsize Organizations It s not uncommon these days for entire data networks to be run by no more than a handful of staffers. Some facilities or remote offices do not have dedicated IT staff. Many midsize businesses are operating with departments that not only act as IT support but also manage the networking, routing, Internet access, phone systems and exchange servers. nd if it s not being managed by someone in house, it s being outsourced. While the size of IT teams has not grown, the amount of data moving through networks has increased. lready woven through the fabric of every business, the IT team will only continue to be squeezed as midsize businesses start turning to big data and analytics for insights. If network visibility and efficiencies are left unaddressed, the challenges these administrators are trying to tackle today will only get larger and network vulnerability will increase. They will be managing more data, doing more reporting, and installing more tools. The network monitoring reality for some teams could still reside on a crash cart of testing equipment that is wheeled or shipped out to a network failure or security breach. hances are they are chasing network failures or a security breach. The engineer gets to the appropriate rack, plug in the tools on the crash cart and the problem is no longer there. So, what to do? Wait longer in hopes the issue might crop up again, cross their fingers that their cell phone doesn t receive a network alert just as they re leaving the building? They warily unplug the crash cart and, just as they do, the problem is back but now the opportunity to capture the information required has passed. That s where intelligent network monitoring solutions come into play. eook: Powerful Monitoring Mandate for the Midsize usiness 4

5 The Monitoring hallenge for Midsize Organizations Whether or not you have monitoring tools, data network architecture can quickly grow into something unwieldy without proper planning. There is always a way to connect something to the network. It may not be done elegantly, but it can be done. Often, though, a piecemeal approach to building a network monitoring architecture is what leads to inefficiencies. You re Here Hackers re Here ata enter ustomers Security Threat ranches and Remote Employees onsider the situation of someone returning from an industry conference with a new IT tool. It s the latest, it s the best, and it must be installed and attached to the network. Or maybe someone else showed up with the latest whiz-bang analysis tool that must be plugged in immediately. The problem with this ad-hoc style of adding tools and devices is that it creates sprawl, largely because traditional switching equipment introduces a constraint. Typically, the number of SPN ports a switch can configure is severely limited and at that point, there is no way to get additional data. The other problem is these switches prioritize live traffic. If the switch becomes overloaded, either a small percentage of the packets are sent to the SPN port or traffic stops flowing to the ports altogether. Without the tools seeing all the data, you don t have full visibility. There is an easier way. eook: Powerful Monitoring Mandate for the Midsize usiness 5

6 Midsized organizations have been experiencing some of the best, clearest advantages from the flexibility and cost savings offered by network monitoring switches. Jim Frey, Vice President of Research, Network Management, Enterprise Management ssociates Solution: Intelligent Network Monitoring Network monitoring allows managers to listen in on all network traffic between switches, routers and other devices on the network landscape. Intelligent network monitoring can observe, conduct IT traffic analysis, filter and direct the right packets to the right performance and security monitoring tools to provide 100-percent visibility and increased analysis, accuracy and results. The right switch limits the overall cost of monitoring and securing your network. Even large enterprises cannot afford to instrument one tool for every point in the data center. That s cost-prohibitive. With an aggregation technology, you can get visibility at every point in the network at a fraction of the cost. How? y aggregating multiple points in the network, merging them into manageable data streams and sending those streams to the correct tool for analysis. Network ata enter PON Monitoring Platform Manage Security and nalysis Tools Internet External ggregation Zone 1 T Zone 2 TP T TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP T More Zones T PON Taps External Firewalls T T T T SPN from switches MZ Server Switches T TP T TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP T TP TP TP TP INTELLSTORE II T INTELLFLEX I 3400 XR INTELLSTORE II lade I-3033-S14-1 T TP T TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP TP Internal ggregation orp. Intranet eook: Powerful Monitoring for the Midsize usiness T TP TP TP TP ontroller LN 40 Gbps Ethernet JJ Unnamed S/N: Ver: 4 Hit [Enter] for configuration Internal Firewalls 2 1/10 Gbps Ethernet / ºc US 3.0 Packet ggregator GPS NT IN 10 Gbps / 40 Gbps PPS/IRIG OUT Status Power T Operations Management and Security Team 6

7 Monitoring the Midsize Network Tracking high-priority issues and alerts PON developed INTELLSTORE II with midsize organizations in mind. It features a data monitoring switch and an analysis tool server on a single blade. The data monitoring switch monitors 14 ports from 1GE to 40GE including advanced multi-function features, traffic aggregation, filtering, protocol stripping, deduplication, payload slicing, load balancing, tagging, and time stamping. The advanced data functions ensure tool compatibility and maximize analysis performance. With the INTELLSTORE II complete integrated network visibility solution, midsize organizations can save on deployment and operation costs. eook: Powerful Monitoring Mandate for the Midsize usiness 7

8 Monitoring the Midsize Network The INTELLSTORE II appliance is conveniently accessible through a dedicated IP address. The switchembedded software includes a fully featured web-based graphical configuration utility. This utility allows for connection configuration, port aggregation, multicast, filtering and load-balancing on every port on the switch. The software also allows engineers to schedule remote monitoring sessions on any data stream and to store the results of those sessions in the blade s onboard storage. This network monitoring switch can be cabled once and, thereafter, accessed remotely through any web browser. oth switch configuration and packet analysis can be performed from a web browser. Onboard disk storage coupled with an embedded network packet analysis software makes PON s solution unique in the world of data traffic management switches. INTELLSTORE II includes a high performance dedicated server for customer-installed third-party applications, enabling multiple analysis tools such as security, performance, latency, and application diagnostics on a single platform. The server is either pre-loaded with a Linux KVM environment and Wireshark for immediate deployment, or can be customer-installed applications with VMware, Xen, Hyper-V or Windows. eook: Powerful Monitoring for the Midsize usiness 8

9 dvanced network monitoring switch functions such as tunneling, packet slicing, and filtering are proving to be particularly useful for midsized organizations looking to stretch monitoring investments. Jim Frey, Vice President of Research, Network Management, Enterprise Management ssociates Integrated Features Make Today s Monitoring Switches Intelligent For a network monitoring switch to be truly effective, it needs to be more than a traffic cop sending packets this way and that. The switch also needs to be able to manipulate those packets so the tools see only the information they need. switch needs to be able to recognize and remove duplicate packets. It needs to help make the most of your manpower and get maximum value from your tools. That s the kind of enhanced capability we mean when we talk about an intelligent network monitoring switch. This is why we created INTELLSTORE II to include features that enhance your ability to keep tools running efficiently and achieve 100 percent visibility. INTELLSTORE II manipulates the data stream to maximize your investment in monitoring tools. With features like Multi Stage Filtering, load balancing and packet manipulation (slicing, stripping, masking, deduplication, time stamping), an intelligent switch is doing much more than simply allow your routing of packets. These features allow businesses to work smarter, more efficiently and achieve scalability. eook: Powerful Monitoring for the Midsize usiness 9

10 Getting the omplete Picture The midsize company IT team has a lot to manage with envisaged growth of end points on the network, moves to voice and video over the network, supporting new applications and services, and everyday provisioning. Then there are the added challenges of mobile employees and those wanting to bring their own device. Some organizations are moving applications to the cloud and enlightened business executives are looking for analytics. The great thing about technology is that its constant forward march is always delivering new capabilities. From an outsider s perspective that s exciting. Faster networks that can provide real-time data are the key to cutting-edge analytics that can give the midsize businesses the insights needed to compete with larger enterprises. The IT team can t be everywhere. IT needs to find some way of automating network monitoring while spending more time with the business partners to address their service needs. Midsize businesses need to be ready for the next big thing, whether that is a cyberattack or tackling ig ata or migration to the cloud. Putting the right network architecture in place makes it easier to pull the data from your network to spot and prevent: ata leaks ttempted network intrusions pplication performance issues Poor user experience ata center bottlenecks eook: Powerful Monitoring Mandate for the Midsize usiness 10

11 Network Monitoring hecklist Identify the network links that need monitoring Identify the types of monitoring (performance, application, security) Select a data monitoring switch that will condition data to the traffic probes Select a data monitoring switch that will increase efficiency of the traffic probes etermine if an all-in-one data monitoring switch and probes solution is the best fit PON s professional services engineers can help with pre- and post-deployment including the building, designing and implementation of network monitoring solutions. Service and support is also available around the clock from the PON team. ontact PON sales via for more information at sales@apcon.com. Other resources: Video: bout PON video Product Overview: INTELLSTORE II Product Overview: INTELLFLEX Series 3000-XR Network Monitoring Switches Informational eook: The Fight for Full Network Visibility in a angerous World Try our Switch uilder to answer a few simple questions and discover the right switch that meets your needs. eook: Powerful Monitoring Mandate for the Midsize usiness 11

12 PON, Inc SW Pioneer ourt Wilsonville, Oregon US Tel: Toll Free: Texas Regional Office 501 W President George ush Highway, Suite 100 Richardson, Texas US sales@apcon.com PON, Inc. apcon.com eook: Powerful Monitoring for the Midsize usiness PON, Inc. ll Rights company/pon PON is an Equal Opportunity Employer MFV R