Ixia’s Flex Tap Secure+ helps prevent accidental or malicious injection of data into a live network to strengthen network security and reduce risk of data corruption. It was designed specifically for business critical applications, such as those supporting huge financial transactions daily, as well as governments and other organizations that need to ensure a high level of security for sensitive data.
Ixia’s Flex Tap Secure+ supports speeds up to 100G, and is 100 percent passive. Available in single mode fiber with a split ratio of 50/50, Ixia’s Flex Tap Secure+ helps eliminate a wide variety of potential situations that can result in data corruption or network disruption, including:
- An organization mistakenly connects a passive fiber tap to an output port on a monitoring tool causing data to be injected back into a live network.
- A government entity in a lawful intercept application is using a fiber tap to monitor a communications link, however the monitoring tool is erroneously configured or connected sending traffic via a tap back into the live network. As a result, it may be possible for a third party being monitored to detect this traffic and reveal the existence of the intercept.
- A third party with access to an organization’s unsecure data center uses a conventional fiber tap to disrupt a live network.
The design of the Flex Tap is optimized and tested for high-performance fiber networks ranging from 1G to 100G. Flex Taps are deployed at any inline connection on the network, therefore no extra overhead or management burden is added to the network devices to copy traffic for the monitoring/security infrastructure. The Flex Tap Secure+ product can be deployed within an existing Flex Tap install base, leveraging the same rack mount chassis. Ixia Flex Taps are protocol agnostic and are compatible with all major manufacturers’ monitoring devices, including protocol analyzers, probes, and intrusion detection systems.
Richard Favier, Company Sales Manager at Phoenix Datacom, a leading Ixia value added reseller in the UK supporting enterprise and government organizations, commented; “The Ixia Flex Tap Secure+ allows customers to prevent any accidental or deliberate insertion of traffic back into a live network link via the tap monitor ports. We anticipate that our customers, who need to ensure the security of their networks, will be very interested in this innovative new product from Ixia to further harden their cyber-security infrastructure.”
