According to the latest NI State of the Network report from JDSU’s Network Instruments, 85% of enterprise network teams are not involved in security investigations, which the company says is a “major shift in the role of those teams within enterprises.”
The eighth installment of the report is based on perspectives from more than 300 network engineers, IT directors and CIOs around the world.
“Large-scale and high-profile security breaches have become more common as company data establishes itself as a valuable commodity on the black market,” NI noted. “As such, enterprises are now dedicating more IT resources than ever before to protect data integrity. … As threats continue to escalate, one-quarter of network operations professionals now spend more than 10 hours per week on security issues and are becoming increasingly accountable for securing data.”
This reflects growth of 25% since 2013, NI said. Not only are network teams spending more time on security, they are tackling a broader range of issues, including implementing preventative measures (65%), investigating attacks (58%) and validating security tool configurations (50%).
Half of the survey respondents reported that correlating security issues with network performance is their top challenge in terms of dealing with threats.
“Security is becoming so much more than just a tech issue. Regular media coverage of high-profile attacks and the growing number of malware threats that can plague enterprises – and their business – has thrust network teams capable of dealing with them into the spotlight. Network engineers are being pulled into every aspect of security, from flagging anomalies to leading investigations and implementing preventative measures,” said Brad Reinboldt, senior product manager for NI. “Staying on top of emerging threats requires these teams to leverage the tools they already have in innovative ways, such as applying deep packet inspection and analysis from performance monitoring solutions for advanced security forensics.”
Some of the other report findings include:
- Year-over-year implementation rates for 40 gigabit and 100G networks nearly doubled in the companies surveyed, as did implementations of software-defined networks. NI projects that growth rate will continue over the next two years.
- Tied to that strength in 40G and 100G growth, network teams expect even faster growth of bandwidth use than they did last year. NI reported that bandwidth use is expected to surge 51% by 2016, driven by multiple devices access network resources as well as larger and more complex data and real-time unified communications applications. Last year, network teams thought they’d have to deal with 37% growth in bandwidth use, so they expect it to pick up even faster.
The full report is available for download here.
In other test and measurement news this week:
• Pasternack has a new line of portable bench top amplifiers that cover extremely wide frequency bands up to 40 GHz. The four models cover multi-octave bandwidths between 1 GHz-40 GHz and are ruggedized for use in high-traffic test labs, as well as using a single AC voltage power supply with internal voltage regulation and fuse protection.
• Tektronix expanded its offerings in the low-cost test instrument range aimed at use in educational settings. This week it announced what it said is the first network-based lab instrument management solution for supporting up to 400 instruments or 100 test benches on one platform. The new TekSmartLab relies on USB ports and a new Tektronix network adaptor to connect instruments either wirelessly or via Ethernet.
Tektronix also launched a new entry-level arbitrary/function generator, the AFG1022, that integrates with the TekSmartLab offering and which the company intends as a low-cost instrument with better performance and more flexibility than competing products in the price class. Some of its performance specifications include dual-channel, 25-megahertz bandwidth with 1mVpp to 10Vpp output and 14-bit vertical resolution; it supports a sample rate of 125 millisecond sample rate along with 64 megabytes of built-in nonvolatile memory and USB memory expansion.
• Keysight Technologies has new multi-emitter scenario generation software to support aerospace/defense engineers in testing electronic countermeasure systems.
