Recording Internet and Network Activity

With the ever-increasing interconnectedness of computer networks in government and across a wide range of industries, including healthcare, education, retail, high tech, low tech, manufacturing and utilities, network and data security are becoming of greater and greater concern. Even small businesses must take greater care with network security; hackers are more frequently targeting smaller businesses, which tend to have more lax security and fewer countermeasures against network intrusions. When network security incidents occur, the key to effective incident response and mitigation is knowing what happened, when it happened and how, which can only be determined from the record of events supplied by packet capture.

The data from continuous security monitoring enables breach reconstruction a precise determination of which equipment and which files were compromised. Any business that handles the personal, financial and health information of third parties must also be prepared to determine the scope of their liability, in the event those third parties' information is compromised or stolen.

Continuous Security Monitoring vs. Periodic Checks

It is not possible to prevent all attacks, making detection of paramount importance. The continuous monitoring provided by standalone packet capture appliances provides a way to move beyond periodic checks, which have proven to be of limited use in the face of proliferating attacks (hackers don’t tend to schedule their attacks with you ahead of time). Whereas period checks leave open large spans of time for outsider mischief to go on undetected, full packet capture provides uninterrupted coverage.

Reasons for Recording Network Activity

Organizations, businesses and information security professionals have many reasons to record internet and network activity, using network packet capture to:

Choosing a Network Recording Device

Several criteria come into play when choosing a network recording device (aka, packet capture appliance).

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