{"id":19892,"date":"2026-09-23T07:42:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T11:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.netwitness.com\/?post_type=glossary&p=19892"},"modified":"2026-09-23T09:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:42:18","slug":"network-traffic-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"glossary","link":"https:\/\/www.netwitness.com\/cyber-glossary\/network-traffic-monitoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Network Traffic Monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What is Network Traffic Monitoring?<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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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.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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.<\/span><\/p>

Network traffic monitoring<\/a> involves continuously observing traffic across a network infrastructure and analyzing the data generated by communications between systems, users, applications, and network devices.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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)<\/a> to collect different types of network information.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The two broad objectives are:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>