Encrypted Traffic Visibility: Meeting the Enterprise need for Better Security

Encrypted Traffic Visibility Meeting the Enterprise need for Better

Enterprises need stringent policies to analyze encrypted traffic to detect malicious traffic and mitigate them to protect their organization from threats.

Getting more visibility into encrypted traffic has become necessary for enterprises to enhance their security and performance. A recent report released by WatchGuard titled “Internet Security Report – Q2 2021” suggests that nearly 91.5% of malware detected in Q2 of 2021 came through an encrypted connection. 

Legacy security applications defend against malware by utilizing deep packet inspection or rule-based monitoring approach on encrypted traffic. Privacy requirements surged the need for encryption. Most of the traditional security tools become obsolete to encrypted traffic because it creates blind spots, which make them difficult to spot.

Encrypted Traffic Analysis (ETA) is a robust way to maintain privacy and get valuable insights into encrypted traffic by passively monitoring a variety of data features. ETA is an efficient approach to overcoming the barriers in investigation and empowers the security tech stack to defend the network despite encryption. Here are a few strategies to increase encrypted traffic visibility:

Secure incoming and outgoing traffic

With a surge in the number of HTTPS traffic, it has become essential for organizations to embrace decryption to ensure application-layer traffic management decisions. SecOps teams can consider adopting an Application Delivery Controller (ADC) such as a Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to get more visibility for other systems beyond the application server. Enterprises find it challenging to suffice the requirements of getting visibility for multiple third-party inspection technologies on the same application connection.

However, gaining visibility in encrypted networks will not suffice the security needs. CISOs should consider implementing orchestration to optimize security investments and maintain constant traffic based on policies regardless of device, topology, or SSL/TLS protocol/cipher. The best SSL orchestrator allows enterprises to seamlessly integrate multiple inspection services together to monitor inbound and outbound traffic flows. 

Also Read: The Need for a Data-Driven Approach to Security Orchestration

The SecOps teams should consider all the possibilities in which all the decrypted traffic is forwarded to a performance monitoring platform before forwarding it to the destination application server. If the SecOps teams detect a suspicious source IP address, they can forward the decrypted traffic to be analyzed by Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and logged by a performance monitoring platform. 

With a robust SSL orchestrator, the additional step of inspection of a suspicious request can happen without intricate routing or other network paths. Moreover, it has a simple visual policy editor with workflows that seamlessly integrates with new and existing applications. 

Get maximum visibility with the right tools

Enterprises need to get deep network visibility to make the most out of analytics. Implementing advanced Machine Learning (ML) tools help to spot anomalies automatically and ensure immediate remediation. CISOs should consider developing customized ML algorithms to detect anomalous behavior, quickly isolate them and remediate performance challenges, and avoid outages that correctly predict impending concerns. Furthermore, the SecOps teams should consider adopting a visible framework that offers a centralized view across the complete network. CISOs should consider evaluating network visibility tools and choose scalable one that is capable of accommodating connectivity speed and managing increasing packet volume to keep their network secure and gain maximum visibility. 

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