Organizations are increasingly adopting enhanced network security monitoring (NSM) strategies to counteract sophisticated cyber threats. A recent report from Verizon highlights that breaches may remain undetected for months, allowing adversaries to inflict significant damage. To address this issue, companies are focusing on real-time visibility and rapid response capabilities.
Traditional defenses like firewalls and antivirus software are proving inadequate in the face of evolving cyber risks. Effective NSM involves continuous traffic data analysis to spot anomalies and potential indicators of compromise (IOCs). By establishing a baseline of normal network behavior, security teams can quickly identify deviations that may indicate malicious activity, significantly lowering the mean time to detect (MTTD) breaches.
Full packet capture (PCAP) has emerged as a crucial element for effective NSM. Unlike logs that may miss critical details, PCAP provides comprehensive visibility into network activity, allowing security analysts to reconstruct incidents with precision. This thorough monitoring enables teams to track the entire lifecycle of an attack, offering insights into the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers, which is essential for improving incident response and future threat prevention.