The following article, “Scrutinizer Brings Flow Analytics to SMBs“, written by David Diaz, was recently featured on TechCrunchIT.

David points out that with the low initial cost for Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer, it is a very affordable Flow Analytics solution for small and medium-sized businesses.

This flow analysis tool can also be deployed centrally and accessed globally via the web interface.  What this means is that one install of Scrutinizer can provide network management information for your entire network and accessible by everyone on the network management team, regardless of geographical location.

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The top security threat in enterprise environments during the first half of the year was the Conficker worm, Microsoft says in its Security Intelligence Report (SIRv7), which covers the first six months of 2009. Read more »

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
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Many companies are primarily concerned with Internet security threats.  I feel that majority of security threats are derived internally. According to Forrester Research, the majority of security breaches involve internal employees, with some estimates as high as 85 percent. Read more »

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
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Optimization of the network often starts with removing traffic that doesn’t need to be there. This topic has been a growing concern for several years.  Just ask google.com:

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Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
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Is your network compromised? Network scans, illegal applications? Want to view the top ten Conversations across your network? How about setting DNS resolution to occur automatically on a regular basis? Or send a syslog when a set threshold is exceeded based on criteria set in a saved report?

With Scrutinizer v7 and Flow Analytics as your network management tool, all of the above can easily be managed and reported on.

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Reporting on traffic impacted by Cisco WAAS using NetFlow requires the use of egress flow in NetFlow v9. Consider the diagram below where the traffic going in on interface 1 should be compressed by WAAS before it leaves on Interface 3:

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Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
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I was working with a call center that had a problem with high bandwidth usage and he wanted to know if Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer would be able to help him out. They were seeing a lot of Facebook traffic on their network and wanted to be able to see if it was coming from the call center.

I let him know that with Scrutinizer, he could add a filter to show him all of the Facebook traffic on his network and limit it to the traffic from a certain IP range. He could also add a filter that would monitor his NetFlow data and alert if a certain amount of Facebook traffic originated from that IP range.
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____________________________________
Jim Dougherty aka "Jimmy D"
Lead PreSales Support Engineer and
Netflow Evangelist for Plixer International!

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http://twitter.com/jimmydnet
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Guys like Stephen Covey keep me inspired.  Have you read his book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People“.  I thought it was great.  It lead me to believe that it was high time someone blogged about what sets NetFlow and sFlow reporting tools apart: Read more »

Michael Patterson
Scrutinizer Product Manager
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Scrutinizer v7 for NetFlow and sFlow analysis has been released. This new version of our network traffic analysis solution is 100% free. Plixer’s new model is to build a business around the modules:

• Central Interface for Distributed NetFlow collectors
• Flow Analytics for Network Behavior Analysis and archiving of data.
• Service Provider Module for setting up per login permissions to see only certain data.

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This is the final part in a two-part blog series on using Cisco NetFlow to identify if your network is part of a botnet. Part 1 gave a quick overview of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and how they’re often caused by botnets flooding Web sites with requests, thus making the Web site inaccessible to others.

It’s not just home computers that could be part of botnets. Any work computer could be compromised if users unwittingly download malware or visit malicious Web sites, putting corporate networks at risk.  How can Cisco NetFlow be used to identify DDoS attacks?
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