IXIA has just released its 2018 security report.In our increasingly digital and connected world, security is an ever-present challenge. Human ingenuity and creativity drive both the solutions we develop and the threats we face. For that reason, we must continue to push forward and implement solutions that are continuous and resilient, stress detection and response, and seek to shrink our attack surface and risk profile.

This year's report focuses on key trends transforming IT security and new technologies that better align with our cloud-based, always-on digital world.Some of the key take-aways

• ​​Security is dependent on total network visibility. Do not lose sight of the foundation of security monitoring: "You can't protect what you cannot see." As network complexity grows, simple traffic visibility needs to keep pace. Work to understand how blind spots develop and how to eliminate them.
• Make resilient security your goal. The focus of security has shifted to from a single pre-deployment event to a continuous practice, designed to detect threats as fast as possible and limit the damage. Make sure your detection and analysis solutions have the real-time packet data they need to deliver the results you need. Use automation between your visibility platform and security solutions to enable near real-time reactions.
  
• Deploy every cloud with total visibility. Cloud environments can be attractive to hackers and bad actors and cloud providers are only responsible for securing the physical infrastructure. Take responsibility for securing your cloud data and applications with visibility to packet-level data and realistic testing of all your cloud environments.
  
• Reduce risk with proactive security testing. Testing gives you the insight you need to understand how your security infrastructure reacts under attack, so you can address weaknesses and accelerate recovery. As we rely more on software-defined resources and data centers, we need to verify that the architectures we build and integrate actually perform as expected.