James Dougherty, Author at Plixer

Gain observability by replicating network data streams

The need for more telemetry data is real.

The word observability is being used quite a bit nowadays. I see it being used in discussions about SIEM tools. My guess is that you’ve heard it and have a general understanding that at its core the term refers to the collection of measurements, better known as telemetry. Telemetry data is extremely valuable for network monitoring, but the million-dollar question is why?

NDR

The devil is in the details: A deeper look into forensics with metadata.

01.26.22 - James Dougherty

Last month, we were faced with another attack. It’s funny, isn’t it? The only thing that we are assured of these days is that an attack will happen. To be truthful, last month’s logjam vulnerability was a bit more of an issue than most. I was talking about the attack with one of our larger European customers and they supported a position that I have had since I started with Plixer over 15 years ago. In a critical situation, similar to the log4j attack, leveraging contextual metadata is the most efficient way to contain the incident. Here are a few reasons why metadata is the better choice for your visibility needs.

Network Operations

What is network traffic intelligence?

08.11.21 - James Dougherty

With the onslaught of malware and cloud applications increasing, network traffic intelligence has become increasingly important. When an infection is unearthed and the incident response team moves in to figure out what exactly has happened, one of the first things they will do is request the logs, including the flow (NetFlow and IPFIX) data. Network and application issues are troubleshot in a similar way.

Security Operations

Packets vs. flow/IPFIX: The effort to reduce dwell time

06.16.21 - James Dougherty

When we hear about a cyberattack these days, there’s often a reference to when the network was originally compromised. In recent years, the need to determine how long that compromise was on the network, who else was involved, and how you’re going to gain this visibility has moved to the forefront of the SecOps team’s needs.

Security Operations

Network traffic demands of the post-pandemic era and how to manage them

04.22.21 - James Dougherty

Gartner just posted their worldwide spending forecast report for the first quarter of 2021 and it looks positive. Clearly, the experts will continue to argue about the economic pressure that has been choking parts of the global economy and whether it’s losing its strength, but from Gartner’s perspective, it looks like we’ll see growth in all IT spending.