How to Extend Network Discovery and Observability Capabilities
Enea recently announced a partnership with Akamai that will extend the discovery and observability capabilities of networking and cybersecurity solutions. But what does this really mean for solution vendors?
The Importance of Network Visibility
Achieving maximum visibility into all aspects of a network – including applications, services, devices, users, and traffic behavior – is essential for ensuring network security and performance. However, a major challenge is that today’s networks are highly complex and dynamic making global visibility a formidable task. An additional obstacle is the high volume of connected devices, especially those that are unidentified and unmanaged. Yet the risk is high. A 2024 Microsoft report declared that 90% of ransomware attacks exploit unmanaged devices, using them to gain initial network access or to remotely encrypt assets.1 Classification of these devices is therefore a strategic and distinguishing function in cybersecurity solutions.
Akamai’s Fingerbank Device Identification Solution
Akamai’s Fingerbank solution provides one of the most accurate device identification technologies. Part of the company’s cybersecurity and cloud computing products, it performs agentless device classification to identify equipment that is being used on a network using precise, detailed profiles of 110,000+ devices across two dozen consumer, enterprise, and industrial device categories.
When combined with Enea’s network traffic intelligence and threat detection software it brings extended visibility to networking and cybersecurity solutions, improving network discovery and observability.
Enea’s Network Visibility Technology
Enea’s deep packet inspection (DPI) engine, Qosmos ixEngine®, is a software component that identifies and classifies network traffic. Embedded in network and cybersecurity solutions, it provides detailed intelligence on traffic data across the whole network, including hybrid. It identifies 4700+ protocols and extracts 5900+ types of metadata across enterprise, cloud/SaaS, M2M (ICS/SCADA), IoT and AI domains. This metadata includes granular insights into applications, services, users, files, actions and traffic behavior.
A Partnership that Extends the Discovery and Observability Capabilities
The combined embedded resources of Enea’s Qosmos ixEngine and Akamai’s Fingerbank device identification enable solutions to raise the performance of discovery and attack surface mapping, and to establish comprehensive, persistent global monitoring (a.k.a. observability).
Critical to the effectiveness of network and cybersecurity operations, this holistic discovery and monitoring represents a key differentiator for today’s solutions, including:
Network Security
- Next Generation Cloud & On-Premise Firewalls
- Intrusion Protection System (IPS) & Network Detection and Response (NDR)
- Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
- Security Information Event Management (SIEM) & Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR)
- Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)
Enterprise Networking
- Edge LAN/WLAN routers, switches and controllers and access points
- Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN)
Endpoint Security
- Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR)
User Access Management & Security
- Network Access Control (NAC) & Identity and Access Management (IAM)
For more details on how the combination of Enea’s Qosmos ixEngine and Akamai’s Fingerbank can raise the performance of your solution, contact us here.