Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

What Is NTA?

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) aids in the effortless monitoring and analysis of networks. By employing machine learning, advanced analytical methods, and rule-based detection, NTA effectively scrutinizes and comprehensively analyzes various network communications within enterprise networks. It establishes a baseline for normal behaviors. Upon detecting abnormal traffic or insecure network behaviors, NTA identifies abnormal values as potential threats and generates corresponding alerts.

Importance of NTA

With the progression of science and technology, enterprises are increasingly dependent on networks for data transmission. Consequently, effective network management and robust network security measures become paramount. Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) plays a pivotal role in this scenario by autonomously identifying network anomalies, enhancing network availability and performance, and ensuring optimal network observability and visibility.

• Facilitating rapid identification of network anomalies: NTA offers real-time monitoring of network-wide traffic, swiftly pinpointing exceptions, presenting detection outcomes, and triggering alarms. By rendering network applications visible and manageable, NTA enables users to promptly identify network anomalies, consequently enhancing network operations and maintenance (O&M) efficiency.

• Enhancing network bandwidth planning efficiency: NTA offers a comprehensive view of network traffic status from various dimensions, furnishing valuable data for network bandwidth planning. Through multi-dimensional traffic analysis reports, NTA furnishes a scientific foundation for capacity planning, thereby optimizing network availability and ensuring efficient resource utilization.

• Strengthening security posture: NTA promptly identifies attackers' attempts to access network resources by identifying unstable asset environments in real-time. By efficiently detecting potential threats across the network, NTA fosters comprehensive security situation awareness at an enterprise-wide level. This proactive approach aids in promptly addressing threats through preventive measures, mitigating potential risks, and safeguarding organizational assets.

• Lowering personnel maintenance costs: NTA enhances the efficacy of security operations by alleviating the need for round-the-clock monitoring and analysis of network traffic by personnel for security purposes. Achieving this through automated threat detection, NTA diminishes the manpower needed for threat identification and analysis, consequently reducing operational expenses associated with personnel maintenance.

Application of NTA

To attain a comprehensive understanding of network traffic distribution and trends, as well as to implement network traffic visualization, NTA can facilitate statistics collection on network access devices as needed, gathering data on network-wide traffic for analysis. The outcomes of this analysis can be beneficially applied in various scenarios, including:

• Visualized and controllable link traffic: NTA monitors WAN links to furnish detailed traffic reports along with traffic distribution and service directions. This functionality enables users to promptly and comprehensively understand the traffic distribution across various services, identifying unnecessary and unproductive traffic. As a result, sufficient bandwidth is ensured for critical traffic, and WAN bandwidth resources are fully optimized.

• Network bandwidth planning: Through NTA, users can access long-term traffic data in reports, examining the traffic distribution of each service on key links for each month. This allows them to assess whether bandwidth is appropriately allocated to key services. Moreover, users can identify if non-key services consume a significant portion of bandwidth, enabling them to reallocate bandwidth to each service based on the traffic distribution of each application.

• Analysis of application server access failures: NTA enables users to scrutinize the detailed traffic distribution of each application server, facilitating early detection of network risks. By pinpointing faulty servers and identifying the root causes of faults, users can ensure the stable operation of the service system.

Differences Between NTA and SIEM

NTA and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vary in the breadth of data they gather and analyze:

• SIEM oversees and scrutinizes security events, including logs and alarms produced by software, systems, and applications on the network in real time. It learns about normal operation modes and raises alerts when exceptions or events occur.

• NTA conducts a thorough analysis of all traffic and traffic records across the entire network, encompassing more than just event records. It conducts comprehensive security analysis on the operations and interactions of all network elements, such as users, devices, and applications. This enables users to promptly identify potential threats and suspicious activities.