Network Monitors Spell Doom for Some Workers

The Kitty has heard tales from the trenches that illustrate the importance of good monitoring tools for a companys WAN. A vendor told El Gato that some employees at his company were once caught playing “Doom” on an expensive T-1 link spanning the Atlantic. The situation was discovered only because the company had invested in good WAN monitoring tools, said the Tipster. “Amazingly, people still seem to think they wont get caught doing wacky things across a network,” mused the Mouser, as he removed his folder of Claudine Longet MP3s from the eWeek server.

Another Tabby Tattler told the Furball about a European services provider that also discovered something fishy in the way its network was being used. The provider found IP addresses traversing the network that didnt belong to the company. When it analyzed the activity using a WAN monitor, it discovered that the traffic was going to its source code server and that the traffic was being generated by (gasp!) a competitor. “People today have no ethics,” groused the Grimalkin. “Why, in my day, an industrial spy had to get a job at the target company.”

In addition, WAN monitoring tools recently helped authorities apprehend a disgruntled employee at a Florida company. The suspect secretly used a fellow employees computer to send a bomb threat to the FBI. When the FBI didnt immediately respond, the frustrated loon sent a note to the FBI inquiring about their lack of response—this time using his own computer. A WAN monitor was put on the case, and the IP address of the deranged perpetrators PC quickly turned up.

The Furry One has heard that NetScout may be sniffing for an acquisition or a new partner and its biggest competitor—Network Associates Sniffer group—is looking to find an OEM for its protocol capture and decoding engine. “Could be kismet,” cackled the Kitty. A tattler claims that folks are jumping ship from the Sniffer group and that despite a recent rosy-looking quarterly report, a dismal future sales outlook for NA could make the rumored deal a reality.

Heres one for the “image is everything” file. Lexmarks recent preliminary earnings announcement included a $15.8 million charge for the abandonment of a CRM implementation. Wall Street fingers pointed to Siebel as the culprit, sparking a sell-off in Siebel shares. Lexmark officials later said it was an Oracle CRM deal it was dumping, not a Siebel implementation. “Me-ouch.”

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