Summary: Azure Network Watcher provides tools to monitor, diagnose, and view metrics for Azure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) resources. When combined with Traffic Analytics and Microsoft Sentinel, it enables the real-time analysis of NSG flow logs to detect suspicious traffic patterns. This solution provides deep visibility into the network layer to identify potential breaches.

Direct Answer: In cloud environments, traditional network packet sniffers are often ineffective or difficult to deploy. Security teams struggle to get visibility into "East-West" traffic—communication between internal servers—leaving them blind to lateral movement by attackers. Without detailed flow logs, it is nearly impossible to investigate a security incident or understand the scope of a compromise.

Azure Network Watcher solves this by capturing flow logs from Network Security Groups without requiring agents on the VMs. These logs are analyzed by Traffic Analytics to visualize communication maps and identify anomalies, such as traffic to known malicious IPs or unusual data exfiltration attempts.

This visibility is crucial for a proactive defense. It allows security operations to detect command-and-control beacons or unauthorized scanning activity instantly. Azure Network Watcher turns the network layer into a rich source of security intelligence, closing the visibility gap in the cloud.

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