Network Security Solutions

"Although often separate, NetOps and SecOps teams share the common goal of maintaining secure, high-performance network infrastructures. Infrastructure and operations leaders can leverage shared data and solutions to optimize budgets, avoid duplication of effort and improve the end-user’s experience."
– "Align NetOps and SecOps Tool Objectives With Shared Use Cases" By Gartner analysts Sanjit Ganuli and Lawrence Orans, July 24, 2018

• How can network security services help you get visibility into your network in the event of a breach?

  When there’s an incident, the first thing the SecOps team is tasked to do is to find all the information they can about an IP address. Traditionally this involves asking the NetOps team to send over pcap files and this might take a long time. 

  With the Observer network security solution, we aggregate those network insights for you, proactively—that is, before the breach happens.

  The Observer application gives SecOps teams visibility into their network by interrogating the network’s devices, and not just routers, switches, and firewalls. We go a step further and talk to your proxy servers, load balancers, and even SD-WAN controllers to fully protect your network. 

  We ask these devices the following questions:
  -    Have you seen this IP address?
  -    What decisions have you made with this IP address?
  -    How did you make that decision?

  Observer goes into the ARP table to get MAC addresses corresponding to the devices in the network. We find user IDs from Authentication Domains, NetFlow, jFlow, IPFix and distill that information.

• How can the Observer platform complement the other solutions in your suite?

  The Observer application gives SecOps and NetOps teams layer 2 and layer 3 network visibility to existing security workflows by interrogating the devices in the network.

  We answer the critical questions of a) What’s connected?, and b) What’s communicating. We then stitch together this information – MAC addresses, userIDs, IP addresses, and more—and compile them into interactive, intuitive workflows that let you navigate between these relationships.

• What immediate business impact can Observer’s network security solution provide you with?
  • We can provide NetOps and SecOps teams with quicker, more accurate threat detection due to more complete forensic data
     
  • We can reduce the number of false positives with the more complete picture provided by Observer’s network visibility
     
  • We can foster collaboration between NetOps and SecOps teams, delivering increased efficiencies between them. 
     
  • We can streamline root cause analysis, especially when it comes to pinpointing why an application is not performing accurately
     
  • We can help NetOps teams resolve subjective end-user complaints
     
  • We can mitigate risk factors involved with the deploying of major IT initiatives
• What is the power of having a flow-based network security solution?

  Many flow-based solutions claim to play in the security arena by providing a few “security reports.” Our product bridges and fills the gap between NetOps and SecOps with views designed SPECIFICALLY for SecOps specialists.  
  Observer provides automated detection of suspicious and malicious behaviors leveraging multiple techniques and aggregates these techniques into an integrated threat map. 

  • IP Blacklisting: Observer continuously updates pre-configured and custom blacklists.
     
  • SYN Forensics: Observer can alert on suspicious volumes and patterns of SYN-only flow records, often associated with network and port sweeps. 
     
  • Traffic Profiling: A core capability of Observer to use the enriched-flow records to build a traffic profile of devices on the network. Profiles are maintained in real-time with all future network-generated device traffic evaluated against past behavior for unusual or anomalous activity.  
• Common network security solutions concerns

  You may have some questions regarding the application of enriched flow in your network infrastructure. Here are some ways that Observer can help you by addressing these network security software concerns.

  1. My devices are not capable of sending flow data…
     Observer can parse log data to produce enriched-flow records that function just like flow data
  2. The most prevalent flow sources don’t have performance data…
     Observer applies advanced analysis functions to produce response time data from flows as part of the enriched flow
  3. Flow vendors aggregate and de-dup, so the forensic value is minimal…
     Observer offers “full-flow forensics” - ensuring that every flow is retained and available for the most detailed analysis. Because of this archiving capability, Observer can help with any retroactive reporting associated with an incident, powered by full-fidelity forensics. 
• How is Observer’s flow-based solution different from other flow-based network security monitoring software?

  Traditional flow-based network security solutions aggregate flow from only some network infrastructure devices. We take this a step further and compile user sources from domain servers and authentication servers, SNMP, MAC addresses from ARP tables, and even cloud sources like AWS and Microsoft Azure.

  When coupled with VIAVI Observer’s third-party validated wire data capture solution, GigaStor, an organization can give themselves the most complete picture of their network: true network visibility.

• What are some key differentiators of VIAVI Observer’s network security software and performance solutions?
  • End-User Experience Scoring
    VIAVI leverages machine learning to identify an issue and automatically isolate the problem domain in seconds. In three clicks, users can go from higher-level dashboards all the way down to network conversations, or wire data transactions, effectively streamlining root cause analysis and reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).
    
    This can be helpful in a security setting because a low end-user experience score can be indicative of a Denial of Service attack, which can also be detected by other tools within Observer’s network security software.
     
  • Enriched-Flow Records
    Having visibility into your network is a critical component of any network security software, and one of the most long-lasting, traditional pieces of network data is flow. Observer transforms traditional flow by stitching enriched-flow records that compile flow, SNMP, user identity, and session syslogs all together in one single “record.” These Layer 2 and Layer 3 insights, when aggregated yield unique, accessible visualizations, such as the IP Viewer. These interactive visualizations and reports allow customer to drill as far as they want into IP to MAC to User relationships, interface and device type information, traffic control, quality of service marking, and more. 
     
  • Integrated Threat Map
    An integrated threat map accessible straight from Observer Apex provides visual ways to detect and monitor rogue activity. IP blacklisting, advanced traffic profiling going beyond basic whitelisting, and SYN Forensics.
     
  • Third-Party Validated Data Capture
    The VIAVI third-party validated wire data capture delivers from the GigaStor component of the Observer platform delivers industry leading stream-to-disk speeds and metadata production to give an organization complete packet forensic visibility into all network activity. This allows a SecOps user to drill into the packet level network conversations, in the event of any breach. When coupled with flow-based analysis, NetOps and SecOps teams alike can benefit from a near complete picture of their network.
     
  • Single Interface with Apex
    Traditionally, it can be difficult for SecOps teams to be granted timely visibility into the network, be it due to organizational silos regarding tool use or because it simply takes time to find the relevant network data. With Observer Apex, SecOps and NetOps teams alike can use the same interface to solve network security and performance related issues.
     
  • The Power of Flow and Packets Combined
    By combining the power of wire data capture with GigaStor and flow-based analysis and archiving with GigaFlow, Observer is able to provide you with information from the data center as well as the hypothetical router at the edge of the network to paint the full picture. The ability to store enriched-flow records in the form of full-fidelity forensics and the retention capabilities of network conversation data from GigaStor means that SecOps teams and NetOps teams can retroactively go back and drill into any transaction in the network. This gives SecOps and NetOps teams true network visibility.

Additional resources:

• Network Performance Monitoring
• Network Performance 
• Network Security
• Network Security Tools
• Threat Intelligence
• Threat Hunting