It’s impossible to effectively manage without data. Despite the fact that most businesses use multiple network monitoring tools, visibility into network utilization and security today is increasingly challenging. At the same time, compliance regulations make overcoming those challenges increasingly important.

Many Factors Block Visibility

The complexity of cloud designs is overwhelming our ability to keep track of them, particularly when there are multiple geographic regions, multiple clouds, and hybrid architectures that may be unplanned. Even when tools are able to provide data on the links between these high-level nodes, there’s very little ability to examine your east-west traffic within a single cloud provider.

Almost all network traffic is rightfully encrypted these days, but what prevents outsiders from accessing data makes it harder for businesses to examine it to see that it’s safe; techniques to allow SSL inspection can introduce their own risks.

The traffic on networks comes from many more devices than before, and not all of them—particularly mobile and internet of things devices—may have been pre-approved. Because of virtualization and cloud, resources aren’t static; they regularly switch their locations. Understanding “normal” patterns is more difficult when normal doesn’t necessarily mean stable.

Impacts of Limited Visibility

That limited visibility makes networks vulnerable to a variety of negative impacts. Malware has become more dangerous, with advanced persistent threats that linger and explore your network. Machines can be taken over and made part of botnets or rededicated to cryptomining.

In addition to increasing your vulnerability to security threats, lack of visibility makes it impossible to monitor and address performance problems. You can’t see trends that indicate developing problems and end up experiencing more downtime and disruptions; you lack real-time data to help you resolve those problems effectively.

Finally, limited visibility presents compliance problems.

Addressing Limited Visibility

There’s no single tool and no single solution to the challenges of visibility in a complex IT architecture, and old firewalls may not be up to the challenge. It’s tempting to simply layer more and more tools to attempt to gain visibility, and there are any number of tools you can add that promise to collect analytics and provide threat intelligence.

Simply multiplying the number of tools, though, creates more complexity and can make it even harder to make sense of the data you’ve got. Look for tools that can consolidate data from multiple sources, providing you the overall vision needed to understand your overall position. Make network visibility part of any network project you execute to ensure that the changes you make don’t compromise your ability to monitor. Get help from an experienced partner like Prescient Solutions. Our network services provide the support and monitoring needed by today’s hybrid environments. Contact us to learn more about how IT consulting and managed services from Prescient Solutions help organizations in Chicago and Schaumburg to solve their IT challenges.