IOTA is a packet capture and analysis tool first and foremost. However, thanks to its advanced packet capture capabilities, it can also be a valuable tool for security teams, supporting the day-to-day business of red and blue teams as they protect their networks.

How IOTA complements cybersecurity analysis?

Unlike agented or in-line appliances that modify traffic, IOTA is designed for passive visibility, supporting in-line or SPAN capture, hardware timestamping with precision down to single-digit nanoseconds, filtering and slicing in hardware, and local SSD storage for forensic purposes. Management is HTTPS-based, with optional ZeroTier support for secure remote access, making it ideal for remote sites.

IOTA also allows captured data to be exported as PCAPNG on demand. This makes it perfect to combine with Wireshark as a “last-mile” deep packet analyzer on top of IOTA’s capture.

Because its capture is precise and easy to operationalize, IOTA naturally amplifies blue-team defense and red-team validation, essentially making it a “purple” complement to your cybersecurity practice.

IOTA cybersecurity benefits

• Trusted, high-fidelity evidence. Hardware timestamping with single-digit nanosecond resolution preserves the order of events for investigations and cross-segment correlation. (As low as 5–8 ns depending on the model.)
  
  
• Flexible placement, zero disruption. Deploy in-line or from SPAN¹; use hardware filters, header-only packet slicing, ring buffers, and scalable SSD to retain what matters without overwhelming tools.
  
  
• Scale to core speeds. Capture continuously at 40/100G with RAID 5-backed storage and PTPv2 nanosecond-precision timestamps for long-term forensics at data center scale.
  
  
• Open handoff to your toolchain. Export PCAPNG on demand or automatically to your servers. Perfect for last-mile analysis in Wireshark or other tools.
  
  
• Operate from anywhere. Use IOTA CM to centrally monitor devices, pull analytics, and even run multi-segment analysis across sites, or connect via VPN to individual devices.
  
  

¹ General limitations of SPAN ports cannot be avoided. Profitap recommends placing TAPs if there is a risk of data loss through SPAN limitations.

How IOTA complements Blue Teams (defensive)

• Incident response & threat hunting. Place IOTA at key capture points to get indisputable packet-level evidence, then zoom from dashboards to a filtered PCAPNG for payload-level proof. Hardware timestamps keep the story straight across segments.
  
  
• Alert verification & tuning. Validate IDS/IPS and EDR alerts against ground-truth packets captured in-line, reducing false positives and accelerating MTTR.
  
  
• Segmentation & control testing. Confirm firewall, VPN, and ACL behavior in production, with ring buffers to rewind around an event and PTPv2 timing for precise correlation.
  
  
• Remote troubleshooting at branches. Utilize EDGE models with onboard storage and integrated analysis to minimize costly truck rolls; experts can retrieve only the necessary evidence. Additionally, IOTA applies OPAL2.0 security to the data storage.
  
  

How IOTA complements Red Teams (adversary emulation)

• Recon & path mapping. Observe real services and flows from the exact vantage point you’ll target—without agents—then hand off tight, sliced captures for proof of impact.
  
  
• Credential & data-exposure proofs. Capture insecure protocols or misconfigurations and export defensible PCAPs for stakeholder review and analysis.
  
  
• MITM/covert-channel validation. Use multi-segment analysis and nanosecond-level timing to verify interception paths and measure stealth characteristics.
  
  
• Truly invisible in-line capture. When capturing in an in-line scenario, the monitored network is physically isolated from the management interface to avoid any risk of injection or MITM attack through the device.
  
  

IOTA use cases for Blue Teams

• Incident response & threat hunting. Capture at the exact choke point, then pivot through IOTA’s dashboards (flows, hosts, apps) and pull a filtered PCAP for payload proof. Hardware timestamps (≈5–8 ns) preserve sequence and chain-of-custody.
  
  
• Alert validation. Verify IDS/IPS/SIEM alerts against ground-truth packets. In-line or SPAN placement gives flexibility without impacting production traffic.
  
  
• Malware/C2 & exfil detection. Spot beacons, odd TLS handshakes, DNS tricks, and large outbound flows; export suspect windows as PCAPNG for Wireshark deep-dive.
  
  
• Control testing & segmentation checks. Confirm firewall, VPN, and ACL behavior at the packet level with precise time correlation across links (and across sites with IOTA CM).
  
  

IOTA use cases for Red Teams

• Recon & mapping. Observe live hosts, services, and protocols at capture points to build the ground picture pre-attack (in authorized tests).
  
  
• Credential/session exposure. Prove impact by capturing insecure protocols or misconfigurations and handing off a targeted PCAPNG.
  
  
• Protocol weakness research. Use slicing, filtering, and precise timing to study fragile or proprietary protocols for misconfigurations.
  
  
• MITM & covert-channel validation. Correlate traffic across multiple ports/capture sessions and between sites to confirm interception paths and stealth, then archive the evidence.
  

IOTA “Purple” team use-cases

(Filtering applies to dashboard views and Download PCAPNG; exports are PCAPNG for toolchain compatibility.)

IOTA “Purple” team benefits

• Faster MTTR, fewer truck rolls. Remote, HTTPS/VPN access to captures and one-click PCAPNG export means experts don’t have to be on site.

• Standardized evidence. Hardware timestamping and on-box storage make investigations repeatable and defensible.

• Scales with the business. Portable EDGE units for branches, CORE for data centers, all overseen from IOTA CM’s single pane of glass (including multi-segment analysis).

• Non-disruptive visibility. In-line and SPAN options give precise capture without affecting performance or security at key points.

• Complementary to Wireshark. IOTA is your capture, filtering, timing, and remote-ops platform. The handoff is seamless: click Download PCAPNG in IOTA, then open it in Wireshark for protocol-level forensics.

Model options at a glance

• IOTA EDGE (1G/10G): Portable taps with in-line or dual-SPAN, hardware filters/slicing, SSD storage.
  
  
• IOTA CORE (10G/100G): High-speed capture/analysis for core and data center links.
  
  
• IOTA CM: Centralized management + multi-segment analytics across all deployed IOTAs.

IOTA EDGE (1G/10G)	IOTA CORE (10G/100G)	IOTA CM
Small/mid-size enterprises, small branches, and small data centers   Dedicated and remote deployment scenarios In-line or out-of-band 1 TB or 2 TB capture storage Capture performance 3.2 Gbps	Core networks, large branches, and data centers Dedicated deployment on central capture point Out-of-band 4 to 307 TB capture storage Capture performance 10 to 100 Gbps	Centralized management application Central interface for bird’s-eye view insight into IOTA analytics Fleet management and maintenance Multi-segment analysis: Latency measurement between different capture points for edge IOTAs

Profitap IOTA allows packet capture and analysis at the network edge, in the core, and everywhere in between. The IOTA lineup starts with portable EDGE models and also covers high-speed CORE models, with IOTA CM to bring all capture points together in one view for multi-site operations.

IOTA gives your teams a shared, tamper-evident view of the network, enabling faster investigations (blue) and sharper validations (red). If you want fewer blind spots and quicker answers, IOTA is the right purple tool for you.