Today, organizations are facing the unprecedented challenge of maintaining control over infrastructures that have become too vast, too fragmented, and too dynamic to oversee through traditional means. Cloud adoption, virtualization, containerization, and the rise of remote work have erased the clear boundaries that once defined the corporate network.
What used to be a single, well-guarded perimeter has evolved into a fluid environment made up of data flows between on-premise and cloud servers, IoT devices, third-party SaaS platforms, and remote employees’ laptops. Each new connection increases the organization’s attack surface – and its potential for blind spots.
Despite millions being spent on IT security across organizations of all sizes, an overwhelming majority continue to suffer network attacks. Large enterprises lead in this arena with 97 percent reporting an attack, followed by SMEs at 88 percent, and SMBs at 83 percent. In this article, Kaspersky unveils the importance of full infrastructure visibility and cites the main challenges that businesses are facing.
The growing challenge of visibility
Modern infrastructures are inherently heterogeneous. Companies combine multiple technology stacks, regions, and vendors in search of flexibility and performance, often sacrificing transparency along the way. Network visibility becomes fragmented, telemetry comes from incompatible sources, and even the most mature enterprises admit that some parts of their environment remain “in the dark.”
These blind spots can take many forms: unmonitored encrypted traffic, misconfigured firewalls, dormant user accounts, or forgotten RDP servers left open after maintenance. Even small gaps like these can serve as an open door for attackers, allowing them to infiltrate and move unnoticed.
As a result, many organizations struggle to answer basic incident-response questions about what happened, when it happened, and where and how it happened. The less visibility defenders have, the longer it takes to respond – and the greater the damage when an incident occurs.
Why visibility matters
Visibility is more than just data collection; it’s the ability to interpret what’s happening in real time and retrospectively. Network telemetry, the record of communications between systems, often becomes the only remaining evidence once attackers erase logs or encrypt files.
Having access to the historical visibility enables teams to reconstruct events, understand the attacker’s path, and close exploited gaps. This “forensic observability” is critical not only for incident response but also for prevention, as by understanding how a breach occurred, you can then stop similar ones in the future.
What true visibility looks like
Full visibility means understanding traffic at every level – from north-south flows (inbound and outbound) to east-west movement inside the network. It requires continuous monitoring of interactions between key assets such as domain controllers, DNS servers, and business-critical systems, as well as endpoints that operate outside the perimeter.
In practice, organizations must find a balance between complete coverage and operational efficiency. Some assets cannot support active monitoring due to performance constraints or legacy technologies, which is why passive network analysis by NDR class solutions such as KATA often complements endpoint telemetry from EDR components. By correlating both perspectives, defenders gain a coherent picture of their entire environment.
The path forward
Achieving visibility is not a one-time project but a continuous discipline. It involves aligning data sources, integrating detection tools, and adopting a mindset where infrastructure is treated as an evolving ecosystem rather than a static perimeter.
Modern visibility-first approaches focus on connecting endpoint, network, and application insights to form a unified threat picture. Whether through dedicated network detection tools, SIEM systems, or integrated XDR platforms, the goal is to see every corner of the digital environment, understand the context behind each signal, and act before threats turn into breaches.
In a world defined by hybrid infrastructures and encrypted traffic, blind spots are inevitable – but they don’t have to be fatal. True resilience begins with visibility. The ability to see not only what’s happening, but why it’s happening, separates organizations that react to incidents from those that prevent them.
Alexander Rumyantsev is Senior Product Manager, Cloud & Network Security at Kaspersky, a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company founded in 1997. With over a billion devices protected to date from emerging cyberthreats and targeted attacks, Kaspersky’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative solutions and services to protect individuals, businesses, critical infrastructure, and governments around the globe. The company’s comprehensive security portfolio includes leading digital life protection for personal devices, specialized security products and services for companies, as well as Cyber Immune solutions to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack (KATA) delivers complete infrastructure visibility by combining network, endpoint, and system-level telemetry. Unlike endpoint-only tools, KATA’s Network Detection and Response (NDR) module passively monitors traffic without disrupting operations or requiring agents on every device – including legacy systems and critical servers.
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