We know all too well that security can be a grind and that modern threats are and will continue to become more and more stealthy and sophisticated. A few years ago, the typical security practitioner's plight was often described as an anxiety-inducing and exhausting existence that involved sifting through an endless barrage of alerts and reacting whenever knownthreats had penetrated their organization.

Unfortunately, though -as with all arms races -modern cyber weapons and defense strategies are more complex than those of yesteryear. In the wake of the SolarWinds supply chain attack, in which a covert type of malware was able to persist undetected for an extended period of time, the need for tools that offer network-wide visibility and behavioral, non-signature-based detection techniques such as machine learning and advanced analytics to identify network anomalies has never been more pronounced.

Many organizations have chosen Cisco Secure Network Analytics as their network detection and response (NDR) solution to acquire the visibility, analytics, and detection and response capabilities that they need to identify anomalous and malicious network traffic and threats that traditional signature-based security tools miss.

I implore you to do the same -but why take my word for it? I mean, hey -I wouldn't if I were you solely based on my recommendation because I'm naturally biased as a Cisco Secure spokesperson.

Fortunately, however -you don't have to take my word for it -thanks to a recent TechValidate survey, you can safely form your objective and unbiased opinion based on what current Secure Network Analytics users had to say about the product:

1. 80% of surveyed customers say that Secure Network Analytics enables their organization to get visibility into what devices, users, and applications are doing on their network

Organizations of all sizes -from small businesses to Fortune 500 conglomerates -across 60 countries provided specific examples regarding how Secure Network Analytics improved their security posture.

One of the things that stood out most was our customers' collective enthusiasm for the comprehensive network-wide visibility that Secure Network Analytics offers. In fact, our customers' appreciation for the best-in-breed level of visibility that Secure Network Analytics provides was so pronounced that we were able to publish 64 testimonialson just this single capability.

To quote just one of them, Dipesh Shah, a Technical Network and Security Leader at the medium enterprise professional services firm, Emircom said, "I personally like Secure Network Analytics because it has provided breathtaking visibility into our network which we had prior never seen before with any other products!"

2. 84% of surveyed customers reduced threat detection and response times by 40% or more with Secure Network Analytics

Secure Network Analytics also scored high on its ability to save teams time by significantly reducing detection and remediation times. To illustrate, a Senior Network Security Architect at a telecommunications equipment company had the following to say about Secure Network Analytics, "Secure Network Analytics increased network visibility by 90%, detected 85% more threats, and reduced our incident response time by 14 days. Cisco's security solutions have simplified our lives!"

3. 73% of surveyed customers chose Secure Network Analytics because of its integrations with other Cisco solutions

Customers are also reaping the benefits of pairing Secure Network Analytics with other Cisco Secure solutions. Coming in first place as the most popular product being used in addition to Secure Network Analytics was Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), with 82% of survey respondents reporting using it as well.

A network and security engineer at a computer software company had the following to say about Secure Network Analytics, "Cisco Secure Network Analytics has reduced the time to detect and remediate threats within our organization from months to hours. One of the features we have found to be most useful is the additional user context and the ability to quarantine infected hosts made available through the integration with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)."

This sentiment, however, is not exclusive to ISE. Secure Network Analytics also now comes with SecureX, Cisco's cloud-native security platform that unifies visibility, centralizes alerts, and enables automation across your entire security infrastructure on a single dashboard and is included and integrated with every Cisco Secure product. Secure Network Analytics users that are also using SecureX reported experiencing the following benefits from this integration:

• Enhanced automated detection and response using pre-built workflows or playbooks
• Improved confidence in alarms through the ability to correlate global intelligence and local context across all the integrated security solutions
• Accelerated threat investigations and incident management using one view

Still not convinced? Check out more of our recently published customer anecdotes by accessing the full survey results here. The results speak volumes about how both Secure Network Analytics and the rest of the Cisco Secure Portfolio can help you ensure that your organization can accelerate its success and protect its future by streamlining and simplifying security operations.

Interested in learning more about Secure Network Analytics? Visit https://www.cisco.com/go/secure-network-analytics or try the solution out for yourself today with a free visibility assessment.

Finally, in the spirit of saving the best for last, I'll conclude by leaving you with the following quote from a Security Officer at a large enterprise industrial manufacturing company:

"We were able to look into detailed information and network traffic, find relations between devices on the network, and investigate several security and network issues with the help of Secure Network Analytics. Network visibility has increased to about 90%, and we are still working on this to gain even more visibility. Incident response has been reduced to hours. Due to the integration with other Cisco security products, we are able to trace down malicious traffic, network performance issues, and all kinds of security incidents every day. Data exfiltration events have also come into focus after the learnings we have experienced through Secure Network Analytics. With hundreds of NetFlow exporters and also from all firewalls, we are able to follow almost all network traffic from its origin all the way to its destination."