The key concept is that security isn’t something you purchase, it’s something you need to do – preferably on an everyday basis. There is no perfect security product that can stop intruders in their tracks. It needs to be a concerted process of best practices that are put into place and maintained. The first step is to put a visibility architecture in place that supports your security plan.

A visibility architecture is essentially a cost-effective design that provides access to network traffic, intelligently filters data, sends the groomed data to analysis tools, and then delivers information as output from the monitoring tools so that IT can make informed decisions about problem resolution and network improvements. With the proper visibility architecture in place, you’ll be able to see what is (and what is not) happening on your network. Simply put, you can’t monitor what you can’t measure and you can’t make accurate corrections without accurate monitoring data.

Once a joint security and visibility architecture is in place, it will provide three valuable attributes to mitigate your security threats:

• Better data to analyze security threats
• Better operational response capabilities to attacks
• The ability to apply a set of consistent policies across your network

These three capabilities are the “golden key” to help you secure your network. Implementation of one or two capabilities may help, but it’s the whole trifecta that will deliver the benefits that can safeguard your intellectual property and prevent exfiltration of critical company data.

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