Gigamon and Plixer – Extending Visibility into the Public Cloud with NetFlow and IPFIX

Updated October 14, 2021.

With the increasing awareness of security vulnerabilities, many enterprises are realizing that despite deploying the best security layers, no network or cloud deployment is safe from cyberthreats. To respond efficiently to attacks, organizations must now gather security analytics not only from their own network, but also from their public cloud deployments; this is where Plixer comes in. Plixer delivers a network traffic analytics system, called Scrutinizer® that supports fast and efficient incident response spanning from on-premises all the way to the public cloud. The solution allows you to gain visibility into cloud applications, security events and network traffic. It delivers actionable data to guide you from the detection of network and security events all the way to root cause analysis and mitigation.

What kind of challenges are customers who are moving to the public cloud?

Public cloud adoption rates continue to rise with no signs of slowing down. Moving to the cloud enables organizations to reduce cost, increase business agility and enjoy resource elasticity. As cloud models mature and comfort levels rise, organizations have begun to move their core business applications to the cloud. In contrast to the benefits of cost and agility, the increasing rate of public cloud adoption has left IT professionals with critical blind spots. When complaints of poor user experience come in, IT must quickly identify root cause. Often, even after determining their own network is not at fault, IT is faced with cloud providers pointing the finger back at them. Organizations need visibility that extends across the LAN, WAN and public cloud to prove their innocence and hold cloud providers accountable.

Scrutinizer’s collection, correlation and reporting of Gigamon NetFlow and IPFIX exports from the network infrastructure and the public cloud are the key to providing the visibility IT teams desperately need. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) recently wrote, “Reviewing network perimeter [NetFlow] will help determine whether a network has experienced suspicious activity.” In addition, Gartner, Inc., says “Network traffic analysis improves the ability of security analysts to spot these attacks with a higher degree of certainty, facilitating a triage of events and prioritization of actions to be taken.”[i]

What is Plixer’s solution for the public cloud and what are the benefits for mutual customers when deploying applications on AWS?

Scrutinizer is the industry’s leading network traffic analytics system. It supports fast and efficient incident response with deep visibility into cloud applications, security events and network traffic. It delivers actionable data to guide you from the detection of network and security events all the way to root cause analysis and mitigation no matter where the problem arises.

Network team benefits:

Enriched data context into network traffic.

Increased efficiency and reduced cost.

Improved network and application performance.

Rapid reporting at massive scale.

Security team benefits:

Reduced security risks.

Improved time-to-resolution.

Better contextual forensics.

Advanced security analytics.

Joint Gigamon and Plixer customers gain valuable insight into their private, public and hybrid cloud implementations, allowing them to maintain better user experiences, reduce security risks and optimize network and application performance no matter where the application resides.

Sample dashboard of exported NetFlow and IPFIX data

How does Plixer integrate with Gigamon on AWS?

As the foundation of the Plixer incident response and behavior analysis architecture, Scrutinizer performs the collection, threat detection and reporting of all flow technologies on a single platform. It collects rich Gigamon NetFlow, IPFIX and metadata exports from the Gigamon Visibility Platform to gain deep traffic visibility across an enterprise’s wired, wireless and cloud-based infrastructure. Together, Gigamon and Plixer offer insight into the cloud, providing much needed visibility to help organizations hold their cloud providers accountable to service-level agreements and secure key infrastructure.

Unlike legacy, all-in-one solutions that cannot keep pace in today’s sophisticated and complex threat environments, Scrutinizer excels at delivering real-time context and situational awareness. Now with the help of Gigamon, this can extend all the way into the public cloud.

If you haven’t tried Scrutinizer yet, you can download the free edition to see how well it works with the Gigamon Visibility Platform and how it can help you better manage and secure your own network while keeping both your boss and users delighted.

For more information, please watch the Gigamon and Plixer Network Traffic Analytics video.

[i] Gartner, Inc., “Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Protection,” July 2016.

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