3 Key Ways Fragmented Visibility Weakens Enterprise Networks

Enterprise networks have never been more complicated than they are today—think Internet of Things devices, cloud applications, remote collaboration, mobile employees, network security tools and more. And while there’s no question that these complicated networks are vital to the success of enterprises, it’s also indisputable they create myriad issues for already overburdened IT and security teams.

One of the most pressing concerns is the need for complete network visibility. What does that mean? True unimpeded network visibility enables IT and security teams to see any service, any cloud, any network and any workload. This includes hybrid networks; multicloud environments; all traffic (north-south and east-west); multivendor solutions across physical, virtual and hybrid networks; and multigenerational networks across all domains of mobile technology, including 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G and Wi-Fi.

Without full network visibility, IT and security teams lack the insight needed to quickly allocate resources, optimize performance and secure the network. Securing the network is arguably the most important of these functions, given, according to IBM, the average cost of a data breach is $4.35 million, an increase of about 3% from 2021 and a 13% increase from 2020.

Adversaries continually innovate and improve upon their tactics, creating new strategies to get at the valuable data that enterprises maintain. During the last six months of 2021, adversaries launched more than 9.7 million distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks using everything from ransomware to DDoS-for-hire platforms on the dark web, where attacks of all sizes and costs are easily purchased by anyone wishing to launch an attack against an enterprise.

To fully understand the need for network visibility, let’s look at three additional ways in which fragmented visibility impacts networks:

1. Reduced application and network performance: Applications play a vital role in enterprise networks, facilitating cooperation and coordination of work and systems across the entire enterprise. Poor application performance results in frustrated users and customers, loss of revenue and diminished brand reputation. Likewise, healthy, stable network performance is an absolute necessity for enterprises, irrespective of the fact that networks are increasingly complex, and traffic over those networks increases exponentially every day. As such, capacity and bandwidth availability are business-critical priorities that require holistic visibility across the entire enterprise network, including edge and data centers, the cloud and software as a service (SaaS) environments. When enterprise IT and security teams have full network visibility, it enables them to deliver a high-quality user experience for employees, vendors, partners and customers from anywhere, over any device, for any infrastructure.
2. Reduced time to detect and resolve cyberthreats: Cyberattackers are stealthy and patient, and they often operate unnoticed in networks for months or even years. According to IBM, the average time to identify and contain a data breach is 277 days. Breaches that take more than 200 days to identify and contain come with an average price tag of $4.9 million, whereas breaches that take fewer than 200 days to contain come in at $3.7 million. In other words, failure to reduce dwell time to less than 200 days costs enterprises about $1.2 million per breach. When IT and security teams don’t have full network visibility, it’s much more difficult to find and remove adversaries, giving them more time to access sensitive data and introduce malicious malware. It’s important to understand what today’s cyberthreat landscape has made clear: Every enterprise network will eventually be breached—it’s not a question of if it will happen but when it will occur. Without full network visibility, enterprises increase their mean time to detect (MTTD) threats, as well as their mean time to respond to (MTTR) and remediate those threats. IT and security teams are severely hobbled when they lack the network visibility needed to reduce both MTTD and MTTR.
3. Reduced trust and effectiveness between NetOps and SecOps: Traditionally, network operations (NetOps) teams have been responsible for network orchestration and troubleshooting enterprise networks, while security operations (SecOps) teams have focused on monitoring network traffic, incident response and maintaining the overall security infrastructure of the corporate network. But the reality is that both teams share responsibilities and goals. Both are responsible for critical aspects of the enterprise and are tasked with navigating constantly evolving environments—oftentimes under restrictive conditions. Aligning these teams streamlines processes for both network and security operations teams through the sharing of resources, making network infrastructure design, incident response and threat monitoring more efficient and effective. As enterprises increasingly depend upon software-defined networks and cloud architecture, network visibility becomes increasingly vital for successful collaboration across the enterprise to ensure outstanding network performance and improved user experience.

Only by insisting upon full network visibility—what NETSCOUT refers to as visibility without borders—can enterprises ensure the stability and performance of their network regardless of the challenges faced today and those coming tomorrow.

Learn more about NETSCOUT’s Visibility Without Borders.