'Network Forensics' to secure your IT infrastructure

BANGALORE, INDIA: Data security is a cause of concern for every CIO. And securing the network infrastructure is a bigger challenge. This being the case, CIOs/IT managers often look forward to implementing effective security solutions that help maintain and increase business productivity.    

In an effort to address the security needs of enterprises and offer more value-added services to its customers, Bangalore-based Elina Networks, a provider of networking solutions, will shortly launch an interesting tool called 'Network Forensics' which helps in pinpointing the cause of the problem in the enterprise network. 

Elina's solutions focus on addressing the specific pain points of its customers in a very creative and cost-effective way. “We create solutions that have the right capabilities at the right price point,” says Shekar G. Nair, MD and CEO of Elina Networks.

“One of the challenges our customers are facing today is the problem of pro-actively determining what is happening in their IT infrastructure. In such a situation Network Forensics acts similar to crime detection in finding out the root cause of the problem,” he adds.

“Be it a small and medium business (SMB) or an enterprise, data flows through many forms – some of which is important data and some unimportant, some known to the customer and some unknown to them. Most of the times, we find that the business productivity of our customers is hit due to this unwanted data flowing,” Nair explains.

According to him, Network Forensics allows the customer to be able to collect the data flowing through over a period of time. “It visualizes a software, analyses the data collected, and is able to reconstruct what has happened and give the CIO a view of what has happened in the past.”

“This tool has the ability to analyze and reconstruct data, traffic patterns, Web pages, analyse data from the files from the past to help customers pin point the source of a problem or user-based data, and the traffic pattern using a visualizer and collector model,” he adds.

“From the SMB perspective, Network Forensics can be used either by managed service providers (MSP) or by companies such as ours where we will be able to provide them a quick review of the product. From a large enterprise perspective, we see that this tool could be part of their own internal IT group which helps them to use it on a regular basis,” Nair informs.

“The flexibility offered by Network Forensics is that you can actually put the collector at a specific point in your network and we can pick up locations and provide tap points and give orders to tap the particular branch to detect the problem. Then the visualizer goes and analyses what was tapped. Hence it is a visualizer-collector model,” he explains.

“The collector collects the data on the tap points. The visualizer visualizes the data and gives a view on what has to be reconstructed. The visualizer can be installed anywhere in the world. It is based on an IP and network which becomes very effective for the CIOs,” he adds. “Here, the collector part of it will be the gateway and visualizer will run separate as a part of the enterprise model.”

Nair says that Network Forensics is a cost-effective tool. “It can be hosted for a period of time where it collects the data and helps enterprises in understanding the problem by giving the right kind of service. The same can be adopted on a permanent basis or on a yearly basis.”

Currently, Network Forensics is being tested in the beta phase in some companies. The product will be released very shortly.