The analysis layer, not another appliance.
Most enterprises already capture more traffic than they can read. PacketSense is where an analyst investigates a slice of it — importing the captures you already collect, processing them locally, and giving a team the governance to do that safely at scale.
PacketSense is not a capture appliance. It does not tap links, run continuous full-packet recording, or replace the capture stack you already own — and if that is what you are shopping for, this is the wrong tool. What it does is the step after: take the captures your infrastructure already produces and turn them into structured, evidence-backed findings, on the analyst's own machine, under policy your organisation controls.
Downstream of your capture stack.
Nothing about how or where your organisation captures traffic has to change. PacketSense reads standard PCAP and PCAPNG, live interfaces, and text-based evidence.
Your capture layer
SPAN ports, TAPs, firewalls, capture appliances, tcpdump, live interfaces — whatever your organisation already runs.
PacketSense
Where an analyst investigates a specific slice of that evidence: triage, streams, routing, guided diagnosis, reports.
Your output
Evidence-backed findings, CSV and PCAP slices, and reports that trace each conclusion back to frames.
What makes capture hard at enterprise scale.
The problems that show up once packet analysis stops being one engineer with Wireshark.
Volume outpaces attention
Enterprise capture produces far more traffic than anyone can read. The constraint is not storage — it is getting an analyst to the relevant conversation quickly enough to matter.
The evidence is sensitive
Captures routinely contain credentials, personal data and internal business traffic. Plenty of them simply cannot be uploaded to a cloud analysis service, whatever the vendor promises.
Skill is unevenly distributed
A handful of senior engineers can read packets fluently. Everyone else escalates — which turns a scarce skill into the bottleneck for every incident.
Governance is an afterthought
Once more than a few analysts touch capture evidence, someone has to answer who has access, what left the machine, and under what policy.
Controls that scale past a single analyst.
Enterprise tiers add the administrative layer teams need once capture evidence is handled by more than a few people.
Scoped admin seats
Enterprise Admin surfaces only for designated admin seats. Members inherit policy but never manage seats or device inventory.
Policy inheritance
Set local-only mode, allowed AI providers, audit detail and intelligence-update behaviour once, and have members inherit it.
Seat & device inventory
See which seats and devices are active, and deactivate a device seat when a machine or an analyst moves on.
Built for environments that can't upload.
Local-first processing is the default, which is what makes PacketSense viable where sending a capture to a cloud service is not an option.
- Air-gapped and isolated networks — analysis runs without a cloud round trip.
- Regulated environments where capture data cannot cross a jurisdictional boundary.
- Local-only mode enforced by policy across an entire team, not left to each analyst.
- Cloud AI off unless an organisation explicitly enables it, with allowed-provider controls.
- Only small, non-capture data — a licence check, an intelligence update — ever leaves the machine.
How teams work capture evidence.
Practical guides from the team building PacketSense.
Enterprise packet capture — common questions.
Is PacketSense a packet capture appliance?
No — and this matters when choosing tools. PacketSense is the analysis and investigation layer, not the capture infrastructure. It does not tap links, run continuous full-packet recording, or replace a capture appliance. It takes the captures you already collect — from a firewall, a SPAN port, tcpdump, a capture appliance, or a live interface — and turns them into structured, evidence-backed findings.
How does PacketSense fit alongside existing enterprise capture infrastructure?
It sits downstream of it. Your capture stack decides what gets recorded; PacketSense is where an analyst investigates a specific slice of it. Because it imports standard PCAP and PCAPNG plus text-based evidence, it does not require changing how or where your organisation captures traffic.
Can PacketSense be used in air-gapped or regulated environments?
Yes. Local-first processing is the default, so raw captures, sessions and reports stay on the analyst's machine. Enterprise policy can enforce local-only mode across a team, restrict which AI providers (if any) are permitted, and govern intelligence-update behaviour — which is what makes it viable where uploading a capture is not an option.
How do enterprise teams manage PacketSense across many analysts?
Enterprise tiers add seat and device management, admin-only controls scoped to designated admin seats, policy inheritance for members, and audit detail. Regular members inherit policy but do not manage seats or device inventory, so governance stays with the admins who own it.
What capture volume can PacketSense handle?
PacketSense is designed for investigation-scale work — the capture slice relevant to an incident, a ticket, or a specific conversation — rather than continuous petabyte-scale retention, which is what capture appliances and long-term recorders are built for. In practice teams filter or slice at the capture source, then investigate that evidence in PacketSense. It is in active pilot, and sizing for a specific environment is something we work through per engagement.
Scope a pilot for your team.
Tell us about your capture sources, team size and governance constraints, and we'll work through what a pilot looks like in your environment.