According to the research report Monitoring Optimization 2010: Trends and Issues Surrounding Network and Security Monitoring by industry analyst and consulting firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) insufficient network monitoring coverage is a pervasive and growing problem among enterprises, combining network, tool and people challenges.
Only 19 percent of the surveyed organizations currently believe they have adequate monitoring coverage, a problem exacerbated by increasing data center complexity and the migration to 10 Gigabit Ethernet environments.
Each year, enterprises spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on network monitoring tools such as intrusion detection systems, application monitors, VoIP analyzers, data recorders, and protocol analyzers, among others. With all of these investments, data center and security professionals find themselves with a growing arsenal of tools, few of which are deployed optimally. As a result, enterprises are forced to make tradeoffs between network coverage, tool connectivity, and staff availability to monitor more of the network.
The study commissioned by Anue Systems reflects the opinions of network operations and security professionals who say the shortage of network access ports, lack of available monitoring tools, and understaffed data centers – where personnel are required to “wear many hats” – all contribute to a state of increased operational risk within IT environments.
Key findings of the EMA research study include:
- 43 percent of respondents reported a shortage of and inability to share SPAN ports and TAPs for monitoring tools
- 66 percent of companies indicated a lack of sufficient monitoring tools and tool budgets
- 72 percent of companies said their monitoring tools are deployed sub-optimally (47 percent are under-utilized and 25 percent drop packets because of over-subscription)
- 65 percent of respondents face significant monitoring challenges when migrating to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, including the inability to monitor 10 G traffic with existing 1 G tools
- 24 percent of companies reported a lack of support staff for monitoring
- 80 percent of respondents find it difficult to manage tool optimization using filters due to reasons such as the frequency of updates required, lack of command line interface (CLI) skills, and overall staff skill shortages
- 62 percent reported a trend toward generalist roles on network and security teams, reducing the availability of technical specialists like network architects
“While companies have invested heavily in monitoring tools, our research shows there are still significant gaps between the demands of network and security monitoring, and the ability to fully optimize tool utilization,” said Jim Frey, research director, EMA. “With ongoing pressures to do more with less, technologies that facilitate better sharing and leveraging of management data for multiple functional purposes should find favor, while delivering rapid improvement of key IT metrics for uptime, security, and performance.” (Source: Anue Systems, Inc./GST)