Networks and Visibility, a rising security concern

BANGALORE, INDIA: If we go by highlights of a new study, Visibility can be key to breach discovery as about 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.

The findings from a survey of enterprise IT professionals from Ixia further point out the increasingly critical role of visibility in managing and securing their complex, heterogeneous networks.

Ixia surveyed over 220 senior IT staff at enterprises to determine what role visibility plays in helping IT professionals manage and secure their complex and heterogeneous networks.

When asked how network visibility ranked as a priority in their IT programs in 2017, 61 per cent of respondents named it as either their No. 1 priority or a top priority.

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.

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. Some 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 organizations surveyed use more than five security appliances, yet only 36 per cent of respondents protect those security appliances with an external bypass.

Also, 76 per cent of respondents were 'very concerned' or 'concerned' about security in their cloud environment. The top security concern with cloud adoption was 'loss of control over network data' (56 per cent) and being able to achieve full visibility across their networks (47 per cent).

"Most enterprises today are struggling with network blindspots 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. "

An organisations’ ability to gain clear visibility across their networks is increasingly challenged as more key business applications migrate to the cloud. In fact, the Cisco Global Cloud Index predicted that by 2020, 92 per cent of workloads will be processed in public and private cloud data centers, and just  eight  percent in traditional data centers. Enterprises are also struggling with the volumes of encrypted traffic entering and exiting their networks.

A recent Ponemon study found that 64 per cent of organisations cannot detect malicious SSL encrypted traffic, and 62 per cent do not currently decrypt SSL traffic – yet half of all known cyberattacks used SSL encryption to evade detection in the past year.