As Interop once again draws near, the InteropNet infrastructure stands ready and waiting to provide critical connectivity to the thousands of visitors and hundreds of exhibitors who attend the show. Each year, InteropNet is provided by a dedicated band of volunteer vendors, whose preparation starts early in February at the UBM hot stage. There, the network is designed, constructed and tested, so that it is ready to be shipped to Las Vegas in time to provide the network for Interop. Each year, the team reviews the latest technology to determine what is needed to provide a state of the art network that can showcase emergent trends in the networking space.
As many network managers deploying 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) are finding, traditional network monitoring technologies are no longer sufficient to provide the accuracy and visibility demanded by modern enterprises, which depend on the network to conduct day-to-day business. In fact, it’s arguable if traditional methods were ever sufficient; however, it is safe to say that today, the stakes are much higher than in the past, just ask the executives at Target.
What some people may find astonishing with regard to the Target breach, is that a recent report uncovered that their security systems actually detected the initial stages of the compromise and were sending alerts to the security team for weeks! Some ask, ‘how is it possible that they didn’t notice?’ It’s sad to say, but in fact this is a common occurrence. Network and security teams are deluged with alerts and alarms and one of the key constraints they continually face is time to investigate those notifications. With so many alerts, it’s impossible to investigate them all, and those that are passed on for triage are given only a small time window in which the analyst can determine the nature of the alert.
For this reason, accurate packet capture and rapid access to that data are paramount to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of network and security operations teams. With EndaceProbe™ Network Recorders and EndaceFlow™ NetFlow Generator Appliances (NGAs) deployed strategically across the network, investigations are short and accurate, analysts can quickly determine the true nature of the event. In the case of a security event, invaluable pre-breach reconnaissance and surveillance activities are captured in the network history record.
For the second year running, we’ve been selected to provide our EndaceProbes to record all of the activity on the Interop network. We are proud to provide a critical service to such a modern and cutting-edge network and look forward to a successful show. Come visit us in booth #1158!