As organizations scale, technology adoption also increases across industries to meet major performance and security requirements. This raises the need to support different networks and growing volumes of traffic and manage the bandwidth so that every application is accessible around the clock. Enterprises also need to ensure they leave no room for attacks or downtime. But is digitization that easy?
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Microsoft, Amazon, Outlook, and other top companies experienced application slowness and outages in 2023 due to rapid traffic path changes and large traffic volumes, according to Network World.
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Approximately 98% of businesses have been impacted by increased complexity across cloud and on-premises infrastructures, according to a NetApp report.
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According to Nasuni, 80% of organizations report having a widening visibility gap, thus necessitating better monitoring capabilities.
These facts demonstrate how digitization, while revolutionizing the IT industry, also brings hurdles for professionals. Network teams have to find a strategy to converge traditional network systems with highly efficient applications and services, which is increasingly complicated.
Some key difficulties with modern IT environments are:
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An avalanche of data: The current IT landscape with its mix of technologies can generate a massive amount of traffic coming from different sources, like servers, applications, firewalls, network devices, and individual user activities. Since enterprises also have to support latency-sensitive services, such as voice, phone, and video traffic, IT teams should adjust their resources accordingly while addressing potential security concerns.
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Distributed networks: Most enterprises with offices distributed across nations have network devices, servers, and employees spread out across different time zones. Since a hybrid workforce is yet another aspect that requires enterprises to provide remote access for employees to use the network, things can get even more complicated for IT admins to manage. They often have multiple monitoring teams or even multiple monitoring tools. Therefore, it becomes challenging to correlate all the data and offer meaningful insights for the enterprise as a whole.
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Evolving cyberthreats: Cyberattackers today can penetrate an IT organization’s attack surface by targeting multiple endpoints across the network that are the weakest links in the chain. In the absence of internal segmentation, hackers can exploit the network, spread from one end to the other through encrypted VPN tunnels, and go undetected.
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Shadow IT: Shadow IT has been increasing in the IT industry with the rise in remote work as employees have been using off-the-shelf software for efficiency. According to Gartner, 41% of employees in 2022 used technologies that their IT teams couldn’t see, and this percentage is expected to increase to 75% by 2027, proving the increasing risk of shadow IT. Apart from its potential security vulnerabilities, it also incurs expenses based on subscriptions and might harm an organization’s reputation due to noncompliance.
With such challenges looming over organizations, all IT teams must have enough knowledge about who is accessing the network, what information is being shared, what applications are utilizing the network, and where exactly they should look during downtime or other issues.
4 ways network traffic analysis helps
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Visibility: Organizations that are scaling worldwide need deeper visibility into their network to understand its performance, health, and growth. Network traffic analysis software analyzes every device in a network to determine how the devices are accessed and by whom, providing context-driven graphs and reports. This way, you can authenticate traffic and allow only what enhances business operations and doesn’t compromise security.
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Optimization: Analyzing traffic patterns helps you identify bandwidth-hogging applications and prioritize traffic based on its significance. QoS monitoring offered by network traffic analyzers lets you shape traffic and configure policies to ensure that latency-sensitive applications remain accessible and uninterrupted. Therefore, you can also save on investments and allocate resources without upgrades.
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Anomaly detection: As the infusion of technologies into organizations increases, every organization needs a risk management strategy to detect threats with behavioral modeling because traditional security systems may no longer be capable of detecting threats like zero-day attacks. Network traffic analysis software brings the contemporary security monitoring approach by correlating threats such as suspicious activities and sending alerts to help you respond effectively. Harmful threats that have haunted many enterprises, such as DDoS, ransomware, and malware attacks, can be identified way before they impact the entire network.
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Proactive management: Ongoing monitoring is imperative for taking immediate action when the network doesn’t follow the admin-defined normal behavior. Network traffic analysis software allows you to configure alerts and varying levels of severity based on the traffic volume, speed, and utilization so that you can protect against any sudden downtime or outages.
How does NetFlow Analyzer help?
Virtualization, cloud computing, and hybrid networks offer flexibility yet introduce performance and congestion challenges. On the other hand, enabling the productivity and continuous availability of the network remains the top business objective for organizations. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer’s network traffic analysis helps you mitigate issues in your hybrid or cloud environment, keeping you prepared for the dynamic changes to come. How? NetFlow Analyzer:
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Supports both flow- and non-flow-exporting devices.
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Monitors up to 10,000 interfaces in the Enterprise edition.
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Monitors both wired and wireless networks.
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Alerts and reports on any abnormal network traffic behavior.
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Comes with add-ons to make network traffic management easier.
Are you ready to take a free tour of our product? Schedule a personalized demo.
Want to evaluate the tool’s capabilities for your network? Try Simulate NetFlow.
