Navigating Network Security Challenges with Unified Observability

For a long time, security has been top of mind in every company across all industries. But since the Covid-19 pandemic drove more of us to do more things online–from shopping and banking to handling our healthcare at the swipe of a screen–organizations have become increasingly conscious of cyberattacks.

To see for yourself, simply head to your browser and enter the web address of your favorite site, starting the URL with ‘http’ instead of the safer ‘https’. Chances are, it’ll appear ‘untrustworthy’, and you’ll be denied access.

Managing and overseeing network traffic and status are critical aspects of maintaining the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of a company’s computer systems. However, perhaps slightly ironically, it’s difficult to monitor network activity with encryption and other high-level security measures in place.

Essentially, in protecting your network, you’re shutting out not just cybercriminals, but your own well-meaning employees. So, how can you allow the right people to detect threats, breaches, and anomalies without giving access to the wrong ones?

Familiar security challenges organizations face

There are several different security barriers you may be up against. Here are some that might feel familiar:

Your protection is too good

With the widespread use of encryption protocols, monitoring network traffic becomes arduous. Encrypted traffic obscures content and makes it difficult to inspect for potential threats. And while encryption enhances privacy and data protection, it can hinder network security monitoring efforts.

Your network is too overwhelming

Meanwhile, networks have become increasingly complex with the growth of cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and distributed systems. Managing and monitoring them–across multiple platforms, protocols, and endpoints–is tough.

The volume and variety of network traffic you receive won’t help things, either. Handling and analyzing a vast amount of diverse data, including emails, web browsing, file transfers, and multimedia content–all in real-time–can be overwhelming. It requires robust monitoring solutions and capable hardware infrastructure.

Your threats are too sophisticated

When searching for security solutions, it’s important to know what you’re up against. But what about when you don’t? Enter Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): sophisticated and stealthy attacks designed to infiltrate a network and remain undetected for an extended period. These attacks often employ evasion techniques that bypass traditional network security measures and escape detection by standard monitoring systems.

You’ll also likely have vulnerabilities that are unknown to you and your software providers and, therefore, lack a patch or fix. These are called zero-day exploits, and cybercriminals can abuse them to compromise your network. Monitoring for zero-day exploits is hard, as you won’t be aware they’re there.

Your monitoring system is too unreliable

Network monitoring systems generate alerts and notifications based on predefined rules and patterns. But these systems are prone to false positives (incorrectly flagging benign activities as malicious) and false negatives (failing to identify actual threats). Striking a balance between accurate detection and minimizing false alarms is crucial but problematic.

Monitoring network traffic for insider threats, where authorized users misuse their privileges or intentionally compromise the network, can be troublesome, too. Identifying anomalous behavior and distinguishing between legitimate and malicious activities requires advanced behavioral analysis and user monitoring techniques.

Your regulations are too stringent

As you’ll be painfully aware, it’s vital you comply with various industry-specific regulations and legal requirements, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) if you operate in Europe or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Monitoring network traffic while ensuring compliance can be tricky, requiring careful handling of sensitive data and maintaining appropriate audit logs.

A better solution for staying on top of network health

To overcome these obstacles, you’ll probably have deployed a combination of network security standards, such as:

• Firewalls
• Intrusion detection and prevention systems
• Secure network protocols
• Encryption mechanisms
• Advanced monitoring solutions

Plus, you no doubt enforce your security best practices, conduct regular security audits, and stay up to date with emerging threats and vulnerabilities. If so, you’re doing a great job–these elements are essential for maintaining network security.

But now, there’s an even easier way to stay on top of your network’s health without the headache. Riverbed Unified Observability tools are empowering organizations across the globe to maintain the visibility of their network traffic and monitor network infrastructure. No compromising network security standards, and no introducing potential risk to the customer environment.

Real-world impact of Riverbed

International engineers and project management company, Artelia Group, transformed its cyber security using the solution. Franck Martel-Badinga, Head of Infrastructure & Telecoms, explained, “Cybersecurity is a challenge for all organizations globally. We have over 7,000 employees and plan to reach 10,000 by 2025. As a result, we’re experiencing an increased number of attacks that are becoming more targeted and complex.”

To deliver a seamless and secure digital journey for employees and end customers, Artelia wanted to centrally monitor the end-user experience, servers, applications, and the network–even when teams worked remotely. The business had security tools, firewalls, and antivirus and malware software. Still, a talented hacker knows how to easily sidestep the radar of traditional tools to gain access to systems, apps, or networks.

So, Artelia needed to monitor the normal behavior of its network and systems to create a baseline. For example, an endpoint contacting 100 servers in two minutes is clearly abnormal, but antivirus software on a PC wouldn’t flag this kind of behavior.

Martel-Badinga concludes: “The Riverbed Aternity Digital Experience Management and Riverbed NetProfiler solutions provide us with visibility into all data across our networks, apps, and end-users, giving us invaluable actionable insights for the business. It enables us to make even better decisions to continuously improve the digital experience for end-users and our overall business performance.”

A global biopharmaceutical innovator deployed the Riverbed suite to improve its security team’s agility and forensic recall capabilities. It did this by providing an automated process to preserve packet-based evidence associated with security events and they needed support for further security investigation. The solution boosts the AppResponse ROI for the tools team, allowing staff to satisfy additional stakeholders by extending packet retention time without having to invest in additional storage units.

Ready to learn more?

The Riverbed portfolio is constantly being developed and improved to support the latest network security standards and provide visibility into today’s rapidly evolving, complex IT environments. In fact, some might say it’s just too valuable to miss. Schedule a demo today, or visit Riverbed’s website to learn more