WESTFORD, Mass. -- NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC. (NTCT), a market leader in service assurance and cybersecurity solutions, today announced two new products in its nGenius® Packet Flow Switch (PFS) family, designed for critical network security visibility applications. The nGenius PFS 2200 series and nGenius PFS 4200 series, provide 10G and 40G platforms for delivering packet data to network security systems, launching advanced security-optimized capabilities in its product line.

“One of the key concerns with network security is performance of security systems,” said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst, ZK Research. “With the NETSCOUT nGenius 2204 and 4204 packet flow switches reducing processing burden on security systems, organizations do not have to make a tradeoff between features and performance.”

According to a 2016 study on IT initiatives from business information provider IHS, almost 2 out of 3 respondents reported that they plan to implement network visibility and performance monitoring in the next 12 months. Network monitoring is the most important component in the initiatives aimed at reducing network and communications systems downtime, which according to IDC costs North American businesses $700 million annually.

Improving network security and reliability are the key drivers for network monitoring projects, both in service provider and enterprise environments. As these organizations seek to improve capital and operating efficiencies, they are under pressure to rationalize network resources and extend the life of their current investments, rather than add new network capacity. The expansion of security capabilities within the NETSCOUT portfolio enables the networking and the security teams to implement joint security visibility projects, easing the expansion and adoption of security systems that require access to packet data, such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), and many others.

“Network security is fast becoming an urgent priority as a result of the rapid proliferation of IT applications and threats,” said Brian McCann, president, NETSCOUT Packet Flow Switch Business Unit. “NETSCOUT is pioneering business assurance by combining service assurance and cybersecurity defenses into a unified solution harnessing IP intelligence. In doing so, NETSCOUT is helping IT Operations reduce costs, increase visibility, and spend less time managing their tools.”

The PFS 2204 and 4204 products both support 1G and 10G environments. In addition, the PFS 4204 product also supports 40G environments and provides line rate packet de-duplication thereby increasing efficiency and optimizing packet processing for security systems.

NetScout Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: NTCT)