New Research Highlights the Importance of Network Monitoring Switches

By Michael Guta, TMCnet Contributing Writer

Managing networks in today's environment is getting more complex as cloud applications, virtualization, and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives are integrated into the enterprise network. With so many external sources accessing the network, effective monitoring is becoming increasingly difficult. New research by Enterprise Management Associates on network monitoring switches, highlights the role of this technology in optimizing networking and security monitoring architectures and practices.

As the speed of networking links continues to increase the visibility of the entire network runs the risk of being compromised. Network visibility controllers (NVC) allow managers to see what is on the network and control it before it causes any damage. With the widespread adoption of mobile devices and wireless networks, organizations are finding devices that shouldn't be on the network showing up uninvited.

With the number of unknown devices becoming a regular occurrence in many networks, determining if it belongs to an employee, cybercriminals or a rogue organization or government is the job of the NVC.

Network administrators and security experts have to provide access to legitimate users with efficiency, while at the same time ensuring the network is thoroughly protected. This requires classifying the data and the users; defining network access policies; and monitoring and tuning access.

With the right network visibility solution in place organizations will be have a secure network that is compliant without network blind spots and false positives.

"The NVC sector has been growing very fast over the past several years as organizations turn to these solutions to extend the reach and resilience of network and security monitoring and analysis products… As a result, NVCs represent core building blocks for the packet-based monitoring and analysis fabrics that are becoming a part of mainstream management architectures," said VP of Research, Network Management, Jim Frey.

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