Give Tools the Data They Need for Better Threat Detection

Metadata provides summarized information about raw network packets based on Layer-4 and Layer-7 information. With it, organizations gain insight into:

• Critical details about the flow - for example, 5-tuple, protocol information
• Application-level insights based on Layer-7 traffic information
• Traffic flows across on-premises and public cloud infrastructures

The GigaSECURE Metadata Generation capability includes NetFlow, a network protocol used to collect statistics on IP traffic information, such as IP source, destination of traffic, class of service and causes of congestion. NetFlow provides insight into traffic types and usage patterns across systems, enabling enterprises to catch denial of service attacks, data extraction and other events that represent a security risk.

By offloading metadata generation to GigaSECURE, enterprises can:

• Save time and money by not sending raw data to analytics tools.
• Reduce false positives by separating signals from noise.
• Accelerate threat detection through proactive, real-time traffic monitoring versus reactive forensics.
• Reduce High CPU utilization issues in routers and switches.

Although packet data contains valuable information, the exponential growth of data is causing tool overload. Detection tools, such as data loss prevention (DLP), intrusion detection system (IDS) and advanced threat prevention (ATP) tools, are unable to accurately assess all packets for threats.  

GigaSECURE can gather raw data – from the edge to the core to the cloud – and optimize and deliver it to security tools to enhance their threat detection ability across the entire network. The Gigamon solution includes core intelligence and GigaSMART^® applications that enable organizations to reduce the burden on their detection tools. For example:

• Flow Mapping^® takes line-rate traffic and sends it through a set of user-defined map rules to security tools. Organizations can optimize tool performance and drive down costs.
  
• SSL/TLS Decryption helps manage increasing volumes of encrypted traffic. Organizations can ensure that tools focus on their primary functions while circumventing unnecessary appliance sprawl and related costs, complexity and the potential to introduce latency.
• De-duplication eliminates redundant packet information, speeding up forensics and malware detection and reducing the load required to store duplicate packets.