For years, the security trade has been captivated by the guarantees of recent acronyms: EDR, XDR, CDR. Every wave has promised broader protection, higher detection, and sooner responses. And though every of those instruments gives worth, current analysis from Enterprise Technique Group (ESG) reveals one thing the trade dialog typically overlooks: When actual threats emerge, organizations nonetheless flip first to the community.
Based on ESG, 53% of organizations depend on community visibility and telemetry as their main line of protection. Actually, almost two-thirds use the community in some capability to kick off their risk detection and response processes. Much more telling, 93% of SecOps and NetOps groups now share the identical community visibility instruments, which is an indication that the community has grow to be the unifying language of operations.
So, why in an period dominated by prolonged detection and response (XDR) and cloud-native tooling does the community stay the primary place security groups look? The reply is easy: Packets don’t lie.
Why packets nonetheless matter
Endpoints could be tampered with. Logs could be incomplete. Cloud suppliers can restrict visibility. However community packets seize each transaction, each communication, and each anomaly, with out bias. Because of this, regardless of some distributors dismissing community detection and response (NDR) as “old-school” or “on-premises,” ESG discovered that 41% of organizations truly see community instruments because the best-equipped know-how for offering visibility throughout hybrid, multicloud environments.
The reality is that the community has developed proper alongside the environments it protects. It’s now not nearly bodily home equipment watching site visitors on the perimeter. At present’s NDR options scale throughout information facilities, digital servers, and multicloud ecosystems, offering a single vantage level the place every thing converges.
Detection is barely the 1st step
However right here’s the place we consider the dialog wants to vary. Detection, whereas important, is simply step one. The actual problem, and the true worth, lies in understanding a risk by the investigation section.
Give it some thought: an alert tells you one thing occurred. However solely investigation tells you what it was, the way it occurred, and what to do about it. That’s the hole the place attackers thrive and the place security operations middle (SOC) groups typically lose invaluable time.
And that is the place community visibility proves its value past being only a “first line of protection.” With full packet seize and deep community intelligence, security groups can pivot from “we detected one thing” to “we perceive every thing about it.” That shift is the distinction between chasing alerts and really stopping adversaries of their tracks.
Why NETSCOUT Omnis Cyber Intelligence
At NETSCOUT, we’ve seen this shift firsthand. Omnis Cyber Intelligence isn’t nearly recognizing anomalies; it’s about giving analysts the entire, packet-level context they should examine confidently. By unifying SecOps and NetOps on a shared basis of visibility, Omnis Cyber Intelligence helps eradicate blind spots that attackers exploit.
As a result of on the finish of the day, detection will at all times be desk stakes. Investigation is the place the true impression is made. Community packets present the one supply of fact throughout on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, serving as the muse that makes all of it attainable.
Study extra concerning the ESG report.
Learn the way NETSCOUT Omnis Cyber Intelligence will help by offering complete community visibility with scalable deep packet inspection (DPI) to detect, examine, and reply to threats extra effectively.
