Network detection and response has become a strategic requirement for organizations operating large, distributed, and highly interconnected environments.
Attackers are increasingly using modern techniques to move through networks without triggering conventional security controls. When endpoint alerts are incomplete or individual detections lack context, the network often provides the evidence security teams need to understand what actually happened.
In our view, Gartner expects NDR to become increasingly critical for identifying insider threats and attacks launched from compromised internal systems.
NDR global market revenue continues to grow by double-digit percentages, registering a year-over-year increase of 17% in 2025.
Against this backdrop, we are proud to have been named a Visionary in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Network Detection and Response.
Access your complimentary report copy here – https://www.netwitness.com/resources/reports/netwitness-ndr-2026-gartner-magic-quadrant/
NetWitness is designed to support large, complex global organizations that require full-featured NDR capabilities, including strong packet-capture and network investigation capabilities. This gets to the heart of what we have built: an investigation-focused NDR platform for environments where visibility gaps, fragmented evidence, and incomplete attack timelines can create serious operational risk.What This Recognition Means to Us
This is the first NDR Magic Quadrant evaluation since PartnerOne acquired NetWitness in March 2025.
We see the recognition as an important validation of our direction.
Our focus is on moving faster against the requirements that matter most to enterprise security teams: deeper network evidence, stronger detection and analytics, more efficient investigation workflows, broader hybrid visibility, and continued development across IT and operational technology environments.
NetWitness NDR Capabilities we feel are Behind the Recognition
Market recognition is valuable, but security leaders ultimately need to understand what an NDR platform will do for their SOC.
For us, that starts with evidence.
Full Packet Capture and Network Forensics
Many security products can indicate that something suspicious occurred. Far fewer can provide the evidence needed to reconstruct the activity afterward.
NetWitness keeps full packet capture at the center of its network architecture while also supporting metadata-based models that allow organizations to balance forensic depth, retention, performance, and cost across different parts of the environment.
When an incident occurs, analysts can examine the actual network activity rather than relying only on a summarized alert. Session reconstruction helps teams understand communications, file transfers, protocol activity, commands, and other interactions associated with an investigation.
Gartner identifies “Performing retroactive and forensic analysis using network packet flow data and scalable full-packet capture (PCAP) with long-term data retention” as optimal capabilities. The report also notes that organizations use this forensic data to enable threat hunting, identify attack paths, and provide long-term use and storage for regulatory compliance.
For us, full packet capture is not simply a storage capability. It is the evidence layer that allows a security team to move from suspicion to defensible conclusions.
Behavioral Detection Enriched with Context
Gartner defines network detection and response (NDR) as products that detect abnormal network behaviors by applying behavioral analytics to network traffic data. NDR complements signature- and rule-based technologies by establishing models of normal behavior and identifying activity that falls outside those baselines.
NetWitness analyzes network activity in real time and enriches sessions with additional context, including identity information, business context, asset information, and threat intelligence.
This allows analysts to move beyond a basic question such as, “Is this traffic unusual?”
They can instead ask:
- Which identity initiated the activity?
- Is the destination expected for this user or system?
- Is the behavior consistent with the asset’s normal role?
- Does the infrastructure match known attacker activity?
- Did the same identity or host generate related activity elsewhere?
- Is this an isolated anomaly or part of a broader attack sequence?
That context helps analysts prioritize the activity that presents the greatest risk rather than treating every network anomaly as equally important.
Threat Hunting Designed for Real SOC Workflows
Threat hunting should not require analysts to begin every investigation by manually reviewing raw packets.
NetWitness provides visual investigation capabilities, nodal analysis, metadata-based exploration, and direct pivots into supporting events. Analysts can begin with suspicious behavior, explore relationships among identities and systems, and progressively move into deeper evidence as the investigation develops.
Raw packet data remains available when it is needed, but it does not have to be the starting point for every analyst.
By connecting network evidence with context and investigation workflows, we help teams move from an isolated detection toward a more complete understanding of the attack.
Visibility Across Hybrid Infrastructure
Large organizations no longer operate within a single network perimeter.
Their environments may include physical data centers, private cloud infrastructure, public cloud workloads, virtual networks, remote offices, internet-facing services, and operational systems. Security teams need to understand how activity moves across all of them.
NetWitness provides network visibility across on-premises, cloud, and virtual environments and connects the telemetry required to understand the full scope of an attack.
When analysts can examine those signals together, they spend less time moving between disconnected consoles and more time investigating the incident itself.
IT and OT Visibility for Converged Environments
The separation between IT and operational technology continues to narrow.
Remote access, shared identity infrastructure, centralized applications, cloud services, engineering workstations, and vendor connectivity increasingly create pathways between enterprise and industrial networks.
Over the past year, we have increased our focus on strengthening visibility, detection, and investigation across converged IT and OT environments. Our objective is not to treat OT as an isolated add-on. It is to help organizations understand activity across the pathways that connect enterprise systems, remote access, identities, applications, and operational networks.
For utilities and industrial organizations, that connected view can be critical. A network-security blind spot may not result only in data loss. It can contribute to service disruption, production impact, or physical consequences.
Support for Highly Regulated Environments
Some organizations cannot evaluate security products solely on usability or feature breadth. Their platforms must also meet specific certification, assurance, deployment, and procurement requirements.
NetWitness supports organizations operating in highly regulated and controlled environments, including government and defense networks. The platform adheres to Common Criteria requirements and is certified for inclusion on the U.S. Department of Defense Information Network Unified Capabilities Approved Products List.
These qualifications reflect the types of environments for which we have built NetWitness: environments where integrity, evidence, deployment control, operational resilience, and security assurance are essential.
Purpose-Built for Enterprise Complexity
NetWitness is not designed for small and mid-sized business environments. It is focused on large, complex organizations that require a full-featured NDR platform and strong packet-capture capabilities.
We consider that focus a strength. A global enterprise, government agency, financial institution, or critical infrastructure operator has fundamentally different requirements from a small organization looking for a lightweight, highly automated security product.
Enterprise security teams may need:
- High-volume packet ingestion
- Flexible deployment architectures
- Long-term evidence retention
- Support for isolated or restricted networks
- Advanced threat hunting and network forensics
- Integration across network, endpoint, identity, cloud, and log data
- Customization for specialized environments
- Investigation workflows that support complex incidents
Those are the environments for which NetWitness has been built.
Where We Are Headed
The NDR market is evolving quickly. Gartner identifies third-party integrations, identity context, encrypted traffic analysis, OT visibility, AI-assisted investigation, larger sensors, attack-path prediction, and broader SOC workflows as important areas of market development.
Our roadmap is aligned with that direction, but our foundation remains consistent.
We believe security teams need network detection supported by investigation-grade evidence. They need behavioral analytics, but they also need to understand why activity matters. They need automation, but they cannot sacrifice explainability. They need broader visibility, but they also need the ability to examine exactly what happened when an incident becomes serious.
We are moving faster to expand these capabilities while continuing to invest in our unique capabilities that have long differentiated NetWitness.
Being named a Visionary in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Detection and Response is an important milestone for us.
We believe it reinforces our commitment to helping security teams see more attacks completely, investigate them more confidently, and respond with evidence rather than assumptions.
Gain complimentary access to the full Gartner report to review the complete evaluation.
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Network Detection and Response, By Thomas Lintemuth et. al, 18 May 2026
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