Talking with Infosecurity at the Infosecurity Show in London this week, Alan Hall, the firm's marketing director - who has had several years of experience with Novell - said that his firm's technology - which is used by a variety of government agencies - allows IT managers to go beyond deep level packet inspection by logging all aspects of network traffic on both physical and virtual systems.

The resultant data, he says, can then be analysed at leisure and allows IT managers to forensically analyse how network incidents - such as unauthorised intrusions - have taken place.

And, presumably, stop such an event happening again.

Solera's deep packet capture, as it is known, is billed as streaming network data at much faster speeds than other companies.

But the appliance technology is not all about hacking forensic investigations, as it can also be used to analyse why a network element is not performing as it should be and benchmarking the network performance for future comparison.

The DS appliance can also be used, says Hall, to set up network triggers and capture the data when certain events occur.

When an event triggers, Solera's technology can send email notifications and SNMP traps.

Once a particular attack or signature has been identified, every packet comprising that event is available, both in raw packet form or accurately rendered in its original format, he explained.

Hall went on to say that the Solera DS appliances can be deployed in both physically and virtual environments, as well as installed on a closely integrated basis with existing network systems, using a set of programming APIs.

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