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How the State of Maryland Achieves Efficiency, Security, and Compliance with Network Critical

 

Summary

State-of-Maryland

The state of Maryland’s Department of Information Technology (IT) faced challenges transitioning from traditional voice services to IP-based ones.

They deployed our Network Visibility solution to address network complexity, performance issues, and security concerns.

The Challenge

Maryland's IT department has been transitioning users and organizations from traditional time division multiplexing voice services to IP-based services for the past few years.

As adoption rates increased, so did security and performance challenges.

Due to the complexity of the IT networks, performance issues such as congestion and packet loss occurred. Security threats like malware and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks also presented a significant concern.

With that in mind, our client identified that effective monitoring and network visibility could:

  • Improve resource allocation and usage
  • Control costs
  • Enhance issue resolution time
  • Maintain high service availability
  • Avoid downtime

“Network tools like the Network Critical SmartNA-XL™ enables the State to maintain the QoS and QoE of our UC network.” - UC Platform Manager, Department of IT

 

The Solution

The client sought a proactive approach to these issues, so they selected Network Critical's SmartNA-XL™ network visibility solution.

Key benefits of the SmartNA-XL™ include:

  • Comprehensive integration: The solution features five 1/10/40G slots, supporting a mix of passive, active, and bypass test access point (TAP) modules.
  • Enhanced monitoring: Advanced features like aggregation, filtering, and load balancing streamline planning and tool management.
  • Traffic analysis: Captures and analyzes traffic across all network layers to identify and resolve issues before they escalate.

The solution also supports service innovation testing, enabling administrators to evaluate new technologies without risking network performance or user experience.

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“We are also employing the SmartNA-XL™ in the roll-out and testing of new services.” - UC Platform Manager, State of Maryland Department of IT

 

The Results

Our visibility solution provides comprehensive traffic analysis and monitoring across all network layers to identify and resolve issues proactively.

Network Critical’s SmartNA-XL™ enabled Maryland's Department of Information Technology to:

  • Improve network performance: Efficient traffic monitoring and analysis resolved performance bottlenecks.
  • Strengthen security: The solution ensured uninterrupted service delivery and protected the network from malware and other cyber threats.
  • Enhance regulatory compliance: Comprehensive visibility helped maintain compliance with stringent standards.
  • Optimize testing: The Department confidently tested and deployed new services, ensuring optimal user experiences.

 

About Network Critical

Network Critical is an industry leader in network access technology. Our quality 1/10/25/40/100G modular TAP and Packet Broker solutions ensure that our customers have continuous network visibility. Network Critical products eliminate any concerns of downtime and our unique scale-out capabilities enable simple, cost effective expansion, as network and port density requirements grow. The health of your network is always secure with Network Critical products. Our fully flexible range of TAPs and Packet Brokers are used with IDS, IPS, network traffic monitoring tools, sniffers and many other mission critical appliances, to provide 100% network visibility with zero packet loss. With over 20 years experience, a number of industry “firsts” and a reputation for excellent customer service, Network Critical’s solutions are widely used in global networks across a wide range of sectors including Finance, Telco, Government, Energy and Healthcare.