Vmware, Inc.

Packetmotion, Inc.

Pramod John

Maxine R Erlund

Yingxian Wang

Ramachandran V Marti

Mitchell T Christensen

Tsehua A Chen

Ai-Lan Chang

Rendell K G Fong

Emmanuel W Jee

Daniel J Lassig

A solution is provided for associating network traffic traversing a networked environment according to a selected category item, such as a user name or other network entity identity-related information. The solution includes a collector and a monitor. The collector extracts a user name and a network address from an event log maintained on the networked environment. The monitor receives the network traffic and identifies at least one packet having a network address that matches the extracted network address. After at least one of the packets is identified, the collector associates the identified packet(s) with the extracted user name.

Monitoring network traffic by using event log information

A solution is provided for associating network traffic traversing on a networked environment according to a selected category item, such as a user name or other network entity identity-related information, by using a monitor device. The solution includes: obtaining user information from the directory service by obtaining at least one set of user object attributes from the directory service; identifying at least one authentication exchange packet from packets traversing on the networked environment; extracting a user ID and a network address from the authentication exchange packet; filtering or selecting packets traversing on the network environment that each have a network address equivalent to the extracted network address; and associating packets that were selected with user information having a name attribute equivalent to the extracted user ID.

Monitoring network traffic by using a monitor device

A packet traversing on the computer network is received; session information is generated from the packet with the session information including a client network address and a server network address; the packet is associated with at least one object attribute from the directory by using the session information; and a security policy defined for the network environment is enforced by using the session information and the object attribute(s) to determine whether the packet violates the security policy.

Network security policy enforcement using application session information and object attributes

What is proposed is a method of implementing a security system (Packet Sentry) addressing the internal security problem of enterprises having a generalized approach for inferential determination and enforcement of network policy with directory service based group correlation with transparent authentication of the connected customer and the policy enforcement inside the network. The security system enables the network to analyze and enforce policy using any bit or bits in a stream or a packet, conduct Flow Vector analysis on the data traffic, provide Application Monitoring, Normalization and user authentication validation. The system enables the network to implement Group relationship Analysis and correlation using combination of Network inferences and Directory service data resulting in generation of Group norms using statistically significant relationships. These will provide a more secure enterprise environment where data security levels can be enforced and the usage monitored effectively in the infrastructure.

Secure enterprise network

A solution for transparently verifying the authentication of a real user includes a monitor that receives network packets and a collector. The monitor identifies an authentication exchange packet from network traffic, extracts information from the packet and sends it to the collector, which obtains objects from a directory service and determines if the information includes a user name equivalent to a name attribute in an object. If so, authentication is deemed verified. For additional verification, the monitor extracts from the packet a destination address if it is an response packet, or a source address if it is a request packet. Monitor sends the extracted address to the collector, which uses the extracted address to obtain a hostname and determines whether a user account associated with the name attribute is active on a computing device having the hostname. If so, the authentication of the real user is deemed further verified.

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Hayward, CA, United States of America

Pramod John