The Ever-Growing Need for Network Packet Visibility

As I detailed in my previous blog post, we can’t trust all abstraction layers. The cloud has done a wonderful job of removing many hurdles for rapid application development and deployment, but at the same time, we can’t afford to give up all of the knowledge and experience we’ve gained in the past 20-plus years in our own datacenters.

I’ll be the first to encourage moving as fast as possible and being on the bleeding edge, but we just can’t afford to throw away the many years of iteration, “failures,” and the experience of actually troubleshooting issues.

With the advent of smartphones and app stores, many of us have gotten used to pushing a button on our phones and having something magically happen: a ride share, home delivery of goods/food/grocery, booking lodging and travel, and so on.

While this is very convenient, many do not realize the complex systems needed to accomplish such tasks, thanks to the abstraction layers provided by the cloud. This false sense of ease is leading some hands-off leaderships to encourage their staff to rapidly move critical workloads into the public cloud. This rush is causing many to blindly deploy as much as they can into an uncertain and uncharted environment.

Throughout the last decade, most public cloud cybersecurity-related events have been due to cloud vendor customer errors and system misconfigurations; everyone is excited about the ease and all of the possibilities in the cloud, but they’re not familiar with how to best approach and use the cloud.

As I’ve said before, it’s not a binary system. It’s not “You’re either 100 percent in public cloud, or you’re out.” We can have the best of all worlds.

On top of access to valuable network packets in the cloud (as we like to say, “The truth always relies on the network packets”), Gigamon Hawk provides something even more valuable and expensive — time. With Hawk, your team is afforded the time needed to make the best choices for your cloud journey. Hawk is able to extend the life and reach of your current security posture into any cloud. By doing so, your team has the mechanism to gain the appropriate skill set to make a successful and secure journey into the cloud versus haphazardly stumbling their way.