NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., a leading provider of service assurance, security, and business analytics, today announced the availability of its 7000 series nGenius Packet Flow Switches (PFS 7000 Series), nGenius Decryption Appliance (nDA), NETSCOUT External PowerSafe Tap (EPT) and PFS Monitor, which enable unified security and visibility to address the growing need for simplified data center security management.

"As bad actors hijack weaker encryption or piggyback on legitimate SSL sessions, NetOps and SecOps teams need greater visibility into events happening across different systems and domains," stated Richard Kenedi, president, Core Markets Business Unit, NETSCOUT. "These products enable streamline monitoring and reduce risk through greater visibility across the network."

NETSCOUT introduced the industry's first Open Compute Platform (OCP) based packet brokers with the 5000 Series nGenius Packet Flow Switches (PFS 5000) to address service assurance use cases. PFS 5000 packet brokers reshaped the telemetry market by enabling pervasive visibility across enterprise and service provider networks with the lowest total cost of ownership. With the introduction of the PFS 7000 Series, NETSCOUT is extending the OCP value proposition for security use cases supporting active and passive mode of operation with uninterrupted operations.

SSL/TLS has become the dominant encryption protocol in the enterprise LAN and WAN, as well as throughout most service provider networks. The new nGenius nDA enables inspection of SSL/TLS encrypted traffic for use by passive or active security and service assurance tools without reducing performance. Deployed as a transparent in-line bump-in-the-wire device, it can be used in Layer 2 or 3 environments. It can also be deployed as a passive out-of-band appliance to decrypt and feed traffic to passively attached service assurance and security tools. When combined with PFSs, service chains comprised of multiple in-line and passive tools can also be created.

PFS Monitor provides real-time visibility and a statistics dashboard for PFS fabric health. In combination with NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, the PFS Monitor eliminates finger pointing between the PFS fabric and tools teams, delivering faster resolution of configuration and scalability problems.