High data visibility delivers better business outcomes - Rahul S Kurkure, Founder & Director and Cloud.in

Enterprises pick up data from disparate sources and its visibility is very critical for them. There is a significant rise in cloud-based workloads across organizations and the top priority for cloud users is to increase cloud visibility to ensure greater operational control.  The extent of ease by which businesses can monitor their data and analyze it indicates data visibility.  The higher the data visibility, the chances of taking informed decisions are greater. Network visibility equips the IT teams to become more aware of the data, components, and other network content within any enterprise computer network. 

Studies show a majority of companies have low visibility into their public cloud environments and the tools and data supplied by cloud providers are insufficient. Lack of visibility can lead to the masking of security threats, operational control challenges, application performance issues, and a decrease in business value.  This implies organizations should have comprehensive cloud visibility to maintain performance and cloud security.

Network performance depends on network visibility

Enterprises today have complex networks operating across multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments, multiple data centers, and other connected devices.  Network performance is defined by both qualitative and quantitative processes and enables the network administrator to evaluate and improve the network services further. To achieve this, data visibility is critical where administrators have to methodically search through the data, monitor bandwidth usage, and troubleshoot network performance issues.  With better network visibility, application downtime or outages are reduced. Due to its transparent feature or transparency across all levels of the network, it provides a bird’s eye view of the status of any ongoing project, leading to on-time delivery. Team performance, resource allocation, and other financial implications can be easily tracked, and informed decisions taken by addressing potential risks if any.  It enables technical issues to be diagnosed remotely where appropriate solutions can be put in place.  The efficiency and effectiveness of the teams increase.  Visibility can also help in better application performance monitoring while enhancing the end-user experience.

Powerful network visualization tools can help in this regard to identify performance issues. Data flow, from and to nodes and different devices can be monitored.  These tools will access the databases or cloud storage platforms and use the data there to map the network.  This could deliver a single-page view that accelerates the process of addressing issues.

Network visibility enhances threat detection and response

As the threat landscape expands, getting more complex and dynamic, network threat detection and response becomes more challenging.  The increasing blind spots across the network could lead to security compromises.  The business impact due to this will include, customer and revenue loss besides making a dent in the brand reputation.  Furthermore, cloud adoption, remote working environments, BYOD deployment, and exploding IoT devices are all making it a challenge to maintain comprehensive visibility across the network. Establishing network visibility is much required to begin with as it helps in bridging the gaps that other tools fail to offer. End-to-end visibility across the network would equip security analysts with inputs that are required to identify and address threats effectively.  Yes, data visibility should be at the core of the cyber security strategy as this will provide an understanding of where the network is potentially vulnerable and the immediate need to protect those areas. It helps to get control over the landscape and identify where data is being accessed or transformed, proactively securing it to eliminate future unauthorized access. This empowers the security teams to make the much-needed structural changes in the cyber-security strategy as well. 

Implementation of network visibility solutions can also address the under-skilled and understaffed Security Operations Center.