2015 State of the Network Study
Network Teams Increasingly Accountable in the Battle for Data Security. Finds 85 Percent of Enterprise Network Teams Now Involved in Security Investigations.
Deployment Rates for High-Performance Network Visibility and Software Defined Solutions Expected to Double in Two Years
Based on insight gathered from 322 network engineers, IT directors and CIOs around the world, 85 percent of enterprise network teams are involved with security investigations, indicating a major shift in the role of those teams within enterprises.
Large-scale and high-profile security breaches have become more common as company data establishes itself as a valuable commodity on the black market. As such, enterprises are now dedicating more IT resources than ever before to protect data integrity. The Network Instruments study illustrates how growing security threats are affecting internal resources, identifies underutilized resources that could help improve security, and highlights emerging challenges that could rival security for IT’s attention.
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 an average uptick of 25 percent since 2013. Additionally, network teams’ security activities are diversifying. Teams are increasingly implementing preventative measures (65 percent), investigating attacks (58 percent) and validating security tool configurations (50 percent). When dealing with threats, half of respondents indicated that correlating security issues with network performance is their top challenge.
Results were compiled from the insights of 322 respondents, including network engineers, IT directors, and CIOs from around the world. In addition to geographic diversity, the study’s sample was evenly distributed among networks and business verticals of different sizes. Responses were collected from December 16, 2014 to December 27, 2014 via online surveys.
Study Highlights:
Time spent: Nearly a quarter of network teams spend 10-20 hours per week working exclusively on security issues.
Double duty: A full 85 percent are involved in security investigations, in addition to managing network upgrades, SDN, cloud, and big data initiatives.
Big concerns: Top challenges included correlating security issues with network performance and inability to replay anomalous security events.