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Gaining Scalability and Flexibility for Monitoring and Security Tools
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security
- Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Industries
- Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Cybersecurity
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
The company, a global financial services institution, was looking to enhance its security posture by adding a Behavioral Analytics Security system to its existing packet flow switching environment. The new system was to be deployed inline, meaning that traffic would be returned back to the production network after inspection. The security team also wanted to remove non-essential packets, such as backup traffic and routing protocol headers, from being sent to the security appliance, to improve system performance and reduce false positives. They also wanted to ensure that security appliances were functioning as expected through policy-based health checks. Finally, if a security system wasn’t performing, the team wanted to prevent traffic from being sent to it in order to avoid possible network disruption.
About The Customer
The customer is one of the world’s largest financial services institutions. It provides individual and institutional clients with a range of products and services, including life insurance, annuities, retirement-related services, mutual funds, and investment management. As the company evolved its security strategy, it turned to NETSCOUT to also help it increase visibility and achieve stability in its expanding security infrastructure. The company had previously deployed the Optimizer 2400 for packet visibility supporting Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Network Performance Monitoring (NPM) tools, which were both passive.
The Solution
The solution was NETSCOUT nGenius Packet Flow Switches. They access, optimize, and deliver traffic from multiple network segments to multiple network and security systems — both passive and inline. When deployed in the company’s monitoring infrastructure, the packet flow switches optimize traffic from the network, provide it to the inline Behavioral Analytics appliances, and then send a copy of the data to the passive IDS and NPM tools that are connected to the Optimizer 2400. Traffic can also be sent to other inline security systems in the future if business requirements evolve. The underlying NETSCOUT mesh architecture enables multiple PFS nodes to work together and be managed as one device. The selforganizing architecture provides a redundant mesh among packet visibility appliances for complete, fault-tolerant visibility. This architecture easily scales as needed for global packet visibility.
Operational Impact
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