What is Network Traffic Monitoring?
Network traffic monitoring is the process of collecting, observing, and analyzing data moving across a network to understand network performance, identify anomalies, and detect potential security threats. It gives security and IT teams visibility into network traffic flow, connected devices, communication patterns, and suspicious activity.
For security teams, network traffic monitoring goes beyond checking bandwidth or availability. It can provide the network visibility needed to identify threats such as lateral movement, command-and-control communication, and data exfiltration, while supporting network threat hunting, network analysis, and incident response.
Network traffic monitoring involves continuously observing traffic across a network infrastructure and analyzing the data generated by communications between systems, users, applications, and network devices.
The information collected can include flow records, metadata, logs, and packet data. Network traffic monitoring tools may use technologies such as NetFlow, IPFIX, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and packet capture (PCAP) to collect different types of network information.
The two broad objectives are:
- Network performance: Monitoring bandwidth, latency, throughput, availability, and other indicators to identify performance issues.
- Network security: Analyzing traffic patterns to identify suspicious behavior, unauthorized communication, malware activity, and other indicators of compromise.
For security-focused network traffic monitoring, richer network packet data and metadata can provide greater context than flow records alone. Full packet capture can also support deeper investigation and network forensic analysis when analysts need to reconstruct network activity.
Synonyms
- Network Telemetry
- Network Monitoring
- Packet Capture (PCAP)
- Data Traffic Monitoring
- Network Flow Monitoring
- Network Traffic Analysis
- Network Packet Monitoring
- Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
- Network Security Monitoring (NSM)
- Network Performance Monitoring (NPM)
How Does Network Traffic Monitoring Work?
The network traffic monitoring process generally follows a cycle of data collection, analysis, detection, and response.
1. Collect network data:
Traffic information can be collected from routers, switches, firewalls, servers, endpoints, and other network devices. Common sources include:
- NetFlow and IPFIX: Provide records summarizing communication between network endpoints.
- Packet capture (PCAP): Records network packets for detailed analysis and investigation.
- SNMP: Provides operational information from network devices, including interface and performance data.
- Packet analyzers: Tools such as tcpdump can capture and inspect traffic for troubleshooting and forensic analysis.
2. Analyze network traffic:
Collected information is analyzed to establish normal communication patterns and identify deviations. Network traffic analysis can reveal unusual connections, unexpected protocols, abnormal traffic volumes, or communication between systems that do not normally interact.
Deep packet inspection (DPI) can provide additional context by examining packet contents and extracting security-relevant information.
3. Detect and investigate threats
Security teams can use network monitoring data for network threat detection and network threat hunting. Suspicious patterns may indicate activities such as lateral movement, malware communication, credential abuse, or data exfiltration.
Modern network detection and response (NDR) platforms can combine network telemetry, packet data, metadata, and behavioral analysis to help analysts investigate threats and support the incident response workflow.
Network Traffic Monitoring vs. Network Performance Monitoring
Network traffic monitoring and Network Performance Monitoring (NPM) overlap, but they serve different purposes.
NPM primarily focuses on network performance, availability, bandwidth, latency, and infrastructure health. Security-focused network traffic monitoring examines communication patterns and network activity for indicators of threats.
A mature monitoring strategy may use both. Performance data helps explain whether the network is operating as expected, while security telemetry helps determine whether unusual activity represents a potential threat.
Why is Network Traffic Monitoring Important for Security?
Network traffic can provide evidence of activity that endpoints or log-based monitoring may not fully be captured. Network traffic monitoring can help security teams:
- Detect suspicious connections and abnormal communication patterns.
- Identify lateral movement between compromised systems.
- Investigate potential data exfiltration
- Support network threat defense and threat hunting.
- Improve unified network visibility across enterprise environments.
- Investigate incidents using packet-level evidence.
- Correlate network activity with endpoint and security data.
For enterprise network traffic monitoring, visibility across different network segments is particularly important. Hybrid environments, cloud infrastructure, remote users, and encrypted traffic can otherwise create gaps in visibility.
Network Traffic Monitoring Tools and Technologies
Organizations can use different tools depending on the level of visibility and analysis required for network traffic monitoring.
- Network flow monitoring: NetFlow and IPFIX provide scalable information about traffic flows without storing complete packet content.
- Packet capture: PCAP provides detailed packet-level information that can support investigation and network forensics.
- Packet analyzers: Tools such as tcpdump allow analysts to capture and inspect packets for troubleshooting and investigation.
- IDS: Intrusion Detection Systems monitor network activity for known attack signatures or anomalous behavior.
- NDR: Network Detection and Response platforms provide security-focused analysis of network activity to detect, investigate, and respond to threats.
NetWitness NDR combines full-packet capture, metadata, and NetFlow to provide visibility into network activity and help detect emerging, targeted, and unknown threats.
Related Terms & Synonyms
- Network Telemetry: Data collected from network activity that provides information about communications, behavior, and infrastructure activity.
- Network Monitoring: The broader practice of observing network infrastructure, devices, performance, and traffic.
- Packet Capture (PCAP): The recording of network packets for detailed traffic analysis, troubleshooting, and forensic investigation.
- Data Traffic Monitoring: Monitoring the movement and characteristics of data across a network.
- Network Flow Monitoring: Monitoring summarized records of network communications, commonly using NetFlow or IPFIX.
- Network Traffic Analysis: Examining network traffic to identify patterns, anomalies, performance issues, and potential threats.
- Network Packet Monitoring: Monitoring individual network packets to gain detailed visibility into communications.
- Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): Analyzing packet contents and characteristics beyond basic header information.
- Network Security Monitoring (NSM): Monitoring network activity specifically to identify and investigate security threats.
- Network Performance Monitoring (NPM): Monitoring network health and performance indicators such as bandwidth, latency, availability, and throughput.
People Also Ask
1. Which two characteristics of network traffic are being monitored?
Network traffic is commonly monitored for performance and security. Performance monitoring examines factors such as bandwidth and latency, while security monitoring looks for suspicious communication, anomalies, and potential threats.
2. What is network traffic in cybersecurity?
Network traffic is the data exchanged between devices, systems, applications, and services over a network. Analyzing this traffic can provide evidence of legitimate activity as well as potentially malicious behavior.
3. What protocol is used to collect information about traffic?
NetFlow and IPFIX are commonly used to collect information about network traffic flows. SNMP is also used to collect network devices and performance information.
4. How can I see my network traffic?
Network traffic can be viewed using flow analysis tools, packet analyzers, monitoring platforms, or NDR solutions. Tools such as tcpdump can provide packet-level visibility, while NetFlow and IPFIX provide summarized traffic information.
5. How does network traffic work?
Network traffic consists of data exchanged between network endpoints using communication protocols. Routers, switches, firewalls, and other network devices direct this traffic to its intended destination.
6. How can I identify malicious network traffic?
Security teams can look for unusual destinations, unexpected connections, abnormal traffic volumes, protocol anomalies, suspicious communication patterns, and other deviations from established behavior. Network traffic analysis and NDR can help correlate these indicators.
7. How can I separate network traffic?
Network traffic can be separated using network segments, VLANs, filtering rules, flow records, or monitoring configurations. Security teams can then analyze traffic based on users, devices, protocols, applications, or network segments.
8. What is the purpose of traffic analysis?
Traffic analysis helps organizations understand how data moves through their network. For security teams, it can support threat detection, threat hunting, investigation, network forensics, and incident response.
