When we talk about the business value of a tool or a system that (at first point) may seem like a "nice to have" or "helpful but not absolutely necessary" technology or system, it is good idea to start this discussion by putting some things in perspective.

Business in this day and age depend on ensuring (at least) confidentiality, integrity and availability of business information (business data) which is in major part being stored, processed and transmitted over IT systems and applications. These IT systems and applications in turn depend on the effective and secure network infrastructure for their interconnection and communication. When you have this three main parts set up and maintained correctly, everything works out as intended. You have satisfied your "minimal business operational requirements". As soon as one of these part, for whatever reason, stops working or gets corrupted, the whole business is impacted.

THE THREAT LANDSCAPE TODAY

Let's face it. The threat landscape has changed in the last couple of years and the risks that enterprises nowadays face are multiplied both in terms of the size of their impact as well as increase in possibility of adverse situation actually happening to you, out of all people. Here are some of the game-changers that make businesses re-think their security strategy.

• Cryptojacking is just one example of the change in security risks. DDoS attacks for a penny are another. Let's not even talk about Artificial Intelligence.
• Also recent changes in legislative (GDPR) make it even more costly for organizations to remain unresponsive.
• Increasing complexity of the network (business) infrastructure (IoT devices and sensors, different communication layers, mobility of workforce etc.) as well as chronic lack of skilled technical workforce all help in making this problems worse.

It gets harder and harder to keep up and many businesses face huge problems because of the security incidents or operational issues that are either not being resolved or worse, not even being detected as occurring in the first place.

RE-THINK YOUR SECURITY STRATEGY

First choice is to simply pretend nothing drastic will happen to your business and even if it does you will "figure it out somehow", like you have been doing up to now. Newspapers are full of examples of this choice.

Second choice is perhaps to be more proactive and check out if there is an affordable network monitoring system that can help you achieve your business goals while staying safe and secure. You already have all the data available inside of your network. You just need the "glasses" to be able to see and recognize what action needs to be taken.

THE BENEFITS OF NBA TOOLS

Network behavior analysis (NBA) helps you detect root cause of problems and issues or potentially unsafe activities that are happening inside your own network. One of the ways how NBA helps is by reducing your mean time to respond to detected anomalies and potential security incidents. By reducing your time to respond (or troubleshoot root cause) you make sure that the impact of the event is minimized, the chances of responding in appropriate (regulatory defined) way are increased and the amount of resources you need to allocate (or spend) for mitigation is minimal.

As Gartner points out, detection and response are top security priorities for all organizations.

So in the end, without some form of automated and proactive 24/7 analysis and alerting system it simply becomes impossible to maintain and ensure "minimal business operational requirements" for your organization. You have to ask yourself, how can you really ensure availability and efficiency of your critical business systems if you don't know what is happening inside your network in the first place? If you don't have eyes inside your network, it is impossible.
As in every business, the decision as well as the outcomes are yours alone! Let's make your business effective, efficient and secure.

Thank you to Sinisa Antunovic from Flowmon for the article.​