PCAP Anonymizer

The ability to share network data without privacy concerns is a critical need in the fields of network performance and security research. Network researchers need an effective solution to anonymize packet trace data to enable data sharing and collaborative analysis of network performance. The proposed solution will perform anonymization and sanitization of collected packet traces to protect against the disclosure of host and user identities, network topology, security configurations, and other sensitive information. This solution will capitalize on recent advancements in packet processing libraries as well as ongoing research in network traffic analysis. Phase I successfully proved the technical feasibility of the proposed solution and covered many aspects of research, development and testing. Phase I delivered a software prototype of the Anonymizer application. Phase I also produced an architecture blueprint and a product roadmap for Phase II. Phase II will further develop the Anonymizer application and will mature it to the production release. Phase II will also incorporate the Anonymizer application into the commercial platform with the intent to acquire paying customers. This solution will be made available as a standalone tool that can be deployed and used by the network operations community and academia. Additionally, this product will be rolled into a commercial offering with cloud-based capabilities as a service for network operations and research organizations.