Teldat’s Network Traffic Analysis FAQ’s

Q: What is Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and why is it essential for digital business?

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) solutions provide a much broader view of your network’s activity without requiring assumptions. NTA is critically important because a well-performing network is vital to digital business, yet visibility often does not meet operational requirements, especially as infrastructure moves outside the office and is consumed as a service. NTA delivers essential information needed to impose control and make necessary strategic decisions.

Q: What are the main benefits of implementing an NTA solution like be.Safe XDR?

NTA tools give users back control, inform strategic decisions, aid in maintaining high network security, and significantly reduce the time required to resolve network issues. They help pre-empt network and application-related problems, build business vision, and enable infrastructure optimization.

Q: How does NTA technology work?

NTA technology comprises six main parts: 1. Collection: Distributed high-speed collectors digest telemetric and flow data from network devices in real-time. 2. Normalization: This process unifies all sources into standard system dimensions, regardless of the network event’s origin, to ensure interoperability. 3. Enrichment: The platform uses internal and third-party intelligence feeds to enrich every event, deriving real insights from the raw data. 4. Analysis: Machine learning techniques are utilized to learn network behaviors and discover anomalies. 5. Visualization: A powerful query system can interrogate any aspect of network performance, usage, KPIs, or relevant security information at the required granularity level. 6. ACT: This final stage ensures network operations teams can reliably manage the network using the correct information.

Q: How does NTA aid in controlling user behavior and “shadow IT”?

NTA monitors user behavior and controls shadow IT. It allows you to monitor how users are accessing applications to ensure that only trusted, allowed applications are being used. For example, NTA can provide a complete view of employee productivity and recognize non-productive applications, such as social networks.

Q: Can NTA assist with network security and curbing malware?

Absolutely. NTA helps maintain high network security. It can curb malware by providing an overview of locations affected by malicious activity. Users can classify malware types and analyze the time periods during which malicious traffic was detected for each location. Furthermore, NTA can recognize security-critical connections, such as spyware or phishing.

Q: Is an NTA tool only useful for IT and Communications departments?

No, critically, an NTA is designed to be useful for the entire enterprise, not just technical staff. It utilizes a business-oriented vocabulary and user-friendly interface, ensuring that the CEO or anyone else in the company, even without technical knowledge, can consult and understand the data.

Q: How scalable are NTA solutions for different organization sizes?

NTA solutions are scalable and suitable for organizations of any size and complexity. be.Safe XDR, specifically, is built on a hierarchical, multi-tenant, and multi-tiered architecture, making it ideal for large companies, service providers, or small and medium organizations with specific visibility needs

1. What is Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and why is it essential for digital business?

2. What are the main benefits of implementing an NTA solution like be.Safe XDR?

3. How does NTA technology work?

4. How can NTA help troubleshoot complex network issues quickly?

5. Does NTA integrate with various types of network equipment?

6. How does NTA aid in controlling user behavior and “shadow IT”?

7. Can NTA assist with network security and curbing malware?

8. How does NTA help optimize existing infrastructure?

9. Is an NTA tool only useful for IT and Communications departments?

10. How scalable are NTA solutions for different organization sizes?

11. How does NTA technology use data analysis to improve network understanding?

12. Can NTA help forecast future network infrastructure needs?

13. What kind of reporting and visualization features do NTA tools offer?

14. How does NTA support complex, distributed environments like multi-site retail or large enterprises?

15. What is “forensic analysis” in the context of NTA?

1. What is Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and why is it essential for digital business?

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) solutions provide a much broader view of your network’s activity without requiring assumptions. NTA is critically important because a well-performing network is vital to digital business, yet visibility often does not meet operational requirements, especially as infrastructure moves outside the office and is consumed as a service. NTA delivers essential information needed to impose control and make necessary strategic decisions.

2. What are the main benefits of implementing an NTA solution like be.Safe XDR?

NTA tools give users back control, inform strategic decisions, aid in maintaining high network security, and significantly reduce the time required to resolve network issues. They help pre-empt network and application-related problems, build business vision, and enable infrastructure optimization.

3. How does NTA technology work?

NTA technology comprises six main parts:

1. Collection: Distributed high-speed collectors digest telemetric and flow data from network devices in real-time.

2. Normalization: This process unifies all sources into standard system dimensions, regardless of the network event’s origin, to ensure interoperability.

3. Enrichment: The platform uses internal and third-party intelligence feeds to enrich every event, deriving real insights from the raw data.

4. Analysis: Machine learning techniques are utilized to learn network behaviors and discover anomalies.

5. Visualization: A powerful query system can interrogate any aspect of network performance, usage, KPIs, or relevant security information at the required granularity level.

6. ACT: This final stage ensures network operations teams can reliably manage the network using the correct information.

4. How can NTA help troubleshoot complex network issues quickly?

NTA reveals user behavior, detects bottlenecks, and makes troubleshooting easy. It allows operators to detect network or local outages, facilitating fast troubleshooting. Solutions like be.Safe XDR also make patterns and anomalies visible.

5. Does NTA integrate with various types of network equipment?

Yes. Network Traffic Analysis solutions integrate a variety of technologies. A key advantage of products like be.Safe XDR is their compatibility, using telemetry from all network manufacturers’ equipment. The platform is compatible with any network vendor and can collect and analyze streams from multiple leading vendors’ devices.

6. How does NTA aid in controlling user behavior and “shadow IT”?

NTA monitors user behavior and controls shadow IT. It allows you to monitor how users are accessing applications to ensure that only trusted, allowed applications are being used. For example, NTA can provide a complete view of employee productivity and recognize non-productive applications, such as social networks.

7. Can NTA assist with network security and curbing malware?

Absolutely. NTA helps maintain high network security. It can curb malware by providing an overview of locations affected by malicious activity. Users can classify malware types and analyze the time periods during which malicious traffic was detected for each location. Furthermore, NTA can recognize security-critical connections, such as spyware or phishing.

8. How does NTA help optimize existing infrastructure?

NTA provides the essential information needed to optimize existing infrastructure with confidence. Users can take actions based on facts to optimize infrastructure and gain business vision. This includes discovering if your infrastructure is optimally sized.

9. Is an NTA tool only useful for IT and Communications departments?

No, critically, an NTA is designed to be useful for the entire enterprise, not just technical staff. It utilizes a business-oriented vocabulary and user-friendly interface, ensuring that the CEO or anyone else in the company, even without technical knowledge, can consult and understand the data.

10. How scalable are NTA solutions for different organization sizes?

NTA solutions are scalable and suitable for organizations of any size and complexity. be.Safe XDR, specifically, is built on a hierarchical, multi-tenant, and multi-tiered architecture, making it ideal for large companies, service providers, or small and medium organizations with specific visibility needs.

11. How does NTA technology use data analysis to improve network understanding?

NTA solutions collect real-time data and enrich it to provide insights. Through the Analysis phase, machine learning techniques are applied to learn typical network behaviors, which then allows the platform to discover anomalies.

12. Can NTA help forecast future network infrastructure needs?

Yes, NTA is valuable for network sizing and future-proofing. It helps users anticipate capacity needs for new applications. By analyzing network trends and forecasting investment based on traffic, growth rates, interface capacity, and runout dates, NTA supports strategic planning.

13. What kind of reporting and visualization features do NTA tools offer?

NTA provides a powerful, flexible, simple, and visual tool to generate and reveal relevant information as needed. Users can freely design unlimited Dashboards and Reports and configure alarms for network situations requiring attention. The reports can be enriched with text, images, or external websites. Information can often be filtered and analyzed into multilevel hierarchies or by arbitrary labels.

14. How does NTA support complex, distributed environments like multi-site retail or large enterprises?

For large, complex, distributed estates, NTA provides essential management tools. It allows organizations to nest users and devices (physical and virtual) into an organizational/regional hierarchy that best reflects their reality. This means results can be filtered by branch, department, or user to better understand traffic behavior.

15. What is “forensic analysis” in the context of NTA?

Forensic analysis refers to the NTA’s ability to help users investigate past network events or security incidents. Because NTA provides an interactive tool for real-time and historical network data, it allows teams to perform deep analysis to understand the timeline and scope of issues.