Rethink the network

ExtraHop has released ExtraHop 6.0. With this release, ExtraHop delivers what it says is the industry’s first top-down workflow that enables IT teams to go from real-time performance metrics for application, security, network, and business services to associated packets in five clicks or less.

  • Friday, 16th September 2016 Posted 8 years ago in by Phil Alsop
This streamlined workflow transforms the network from a commoditised transport function into the richest source of real-time insight. The new capabilities give customers comprehensive visibility into end-users’ digital experiences, including direct correlation to the specific data points necessary for rapid restoration and proactive operations.

 
"Traditional domain-centric approaches to monitoring and IT operations management in general are becoming less effective as IT becomes more modular, dynamic and distributed. As business processes digitalise, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals discover that their observations and analyses are increasingly relevant to other parts of IT and the business as a whole," said Will Cappelli in an August 2016 Gartner report titled “IT Operations Analytics Must Be Placed Within an AIOps Context.
 
Wire data encompasses network, client, application, infrastructure, security, and business data – all data-in-motion. ExtraHop 6.0 builds on the platform’s turnkey streaming wire data analytics by introducing functionality designed to ease the evolution of existing IT workflows to meet the demands of modern business. Customers can address the requirements of scale, complexity, and dynamism by automatically discovering devices, systems, and their relationships; observing and measuring their behaviour; and rapidly initiating a forensic investigation of performance and security problems by drilling down to the packet level.
 
Role-specific benefits of ExtraHop 6.0 include: 
    
-   Application and IT Ops Teams have the data they need to support a seamless digital experience for end-users. ExtraHop 6.0 provides automatic discovery of all IT assets and their relationships as well as the ability to monitor communications across applications. This comprehensive visibility streamlines workflows and enables more agile development and data-driven decision-making. 
-   Security Teams gain real-time visibility across the organisation, allowing them to assess their actual risk profile, establish policies and detect violations, and monitor on-going compliance. With precision packet analytics, information security professionals are never more than five clicks from the record of origin for any security incident.
-   Network Teams can leverage the industry’s first top-down workflow that dramatically reduces the average time-to-resolution. Unlike traditional models that involve a retroactive packet capture and require network engineers to search through reams of data, ExtraHop takes network teams from metrics to transactions to the specific packets tied to any incident in under a minute, in five clicks or less.
-   Business Decision Makers now have a single platform that delivers the real-time insight they need to take the decisive and data-driven actions critical for modern businesses to serve the needs of internal and external customers, ensure a seamless digital experience, stay secure, and remain competitive.
 
“Every digital experience -- whether it’s booking a flight, online banking, or receiving medical care -- is supported by hundreds or even thousands of interactions between systems and devices communicating over a network,” said Arif Kareem, CEO at ExtraHop. “Ensuring a seamless digital experience means having visibility into all of these interactions and their impact on the business. The network is the only source that can provide that insight. It’s not just the transport anymore, and there are people, processes, and technologies to maximise its potential. It’s time to rethink the network, and to transform it into what it’s meant to be: a rich, powerful source of real-time data for the digital world.”
 
New capabilities available in ExtraHop 6.0 include:
 
-   Continuous Packet Capture at a sustained 10Gbps puts IT teams within five clicks of the epicentre of an IT issue occurring from any transaction, message, or flow on the network. The ability to precisely identify the records tied to any particular incident dramatically accelerates debugging, forensics, evidence, and data retention.
-   Transaction-to-Packet Correlation allows users to search and download packets linked to a specific device, application, or transaction record. When coupled with the real-time, full-stream analytics and historical search capabilities of the ExtraHop Platform, users have a comprehensive, dynamic, granular, and multi-dimensional view into the most accurate and voluminous source of IT and business data: the network.
-   Integrated NetFlow Analysis combines NetFlow v5, v9, and IPFIX with wire data for broader visibility across interfaces. Built-in metrics for "Top Talkers," "Top Applications," and "Top Conversations" enable IT to quickly identify which interfaces are consuming the most bandwidth in real-time.
-   SSH Protocol Support delivers visibility into sessions with metrics for cipher suites, compression, MAC, and key-exchange to improve security posture.