Arkime is an open source packet capture and network traffic analysis tool. It helps analysts search, correlate, and inspect session data to spot command-and-control, data exfiltration, and unusual host communication, while defenders must protect capture storage because it can expose sensitive content and credentials.
What Arkime is used for in network defense
Arkime sits in the network detection and response workflow as a way to record, index, and revisit packet-level and session-level evidence. That makes it useful when analysts need to move from a suspicious alert to a defensible view of what actually traversed the network.
Because it preserves searchable traffic records, Arkime is especially valuable for validating whether a beacon, lateral movement attempt, or exfiltration path really occurred. A broader NDR workflow can help place that evidence in context, and the NDR Guide is a useful starting point for that operating model.
How Arkime supports investigation and correlation
Arkime’s core value is correlation over time. Analysts can pivot across sessions, hosts, protocols, and metadata to reconstruct communication patterns that may look ordinary in isolation but become meaningful when viewed as a sequence.
That matters in environments where attackers blend into normal traffic, reuse legitimate services, or hide command-and-control inside permitted flows. Session search does not replace endpoint telemetry or SIEM correlation, but it gives investigators a network-native evidence layer that can confirm or disprove hypotheses quickly.
In practice, this kind of tooling is often strongest when paired with detections for unusual destinations, rare user agents, abnormal DNS behavior, and high-volume transfer patterns. The value is not only in finding one suspicious packet, but in turning many small observations into a coherent timeline.
Why packet capture can reveal what other tools miss
Packet capture remains important because some threats are easiest to see on the wire. Encrypted traffic may still expose metadata, timing, destination shifts, certificate clues, or session shape that help distinguish routine activity from compromise.
Arkime is therefore useful for cases where defenders need retrospective visibility, not just live alerting. It can surface host-to-host communication that escaped attention at the time, especially in cloud, east-west, or segmented environments where broad context is otherwise hard to recover.
The trade-off is scale. Full packet retention and indexing can be resource-intensive, and the quality of the outcome depends on sensor placement, retention policy, and how much traffic is actually captured.
Protecting capture data and using it safely
Packet stores are not passive logs, they are highly sensitive evidence repositories. If they contain credentials, session cookies, tokens, internal service traffic, or other confidential content, exposure of the store can become its own security incident.
That is why access to capture data should be tightly controlled, retention should be intentional, and sensitive traffic should be handled with clear governance. Defenders should treat Arkime data as investigative material with elevated confidentiality requirements, not as ordinary observability output.
For organisations aligning network monitoring to a control framework, NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 Security and Privacy Controls provides relevant coverage for access control, audit, and configuration discipline, while NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 helps frame the broader detect and respond lifecycle.
Risk and Threat Considerations
Arkime’s main risk comes from the sensitivity of what it stores and the investigative power it gives to anyone who can query it. If an attacker reaches the capture platform or the underlying data store, they may gain a detailed view of internal communications, credentials in transit, or infrastructure relationships that support further intrusion.
Failure mechanism: Weak access control, excessive retention, or exposed storage can turn a monitoring platform into a high-value source of secrets, operational intelligence, and replayable evidence for an attacker.
Impact: Compromise can accelerate lateral movement, reveal privileged workflows, expose sensitive content, and undermine incident response by giving the adversary the same visibility defenders rely on.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 addresses the attack and risk surface, while NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 and CIS Controls v8 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | AU-2 — Event Logging | Arkime depends on retained network evidence and searchable audit trails. |
| AC-6 — Least Privilege | Capture stores can expose sensitive traffic and should be tightly accessed. | |
| SC-7 — Boundary Protection | Packet capture visibility depends on network choke points and sensor placement. | |
| Recommendation — Define capture and audit logging requirements for network evidence collection. Restrict Arkime and packet-store access to only approved investigators. Place sensors at boundaries and key internal paths to preserve needed visibility. | ||
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-02 — Secret Leakage | Captured traffic can contain credentials, tokens, and other secrets. |
| Recommendation — Scan and protect stored captures that may contain exposed secrets. | ||
| CIS Controls v8 | CIS-8 — Audit Log Management | Arkime relies on preserved telemetry for investigation and review. |
| Recommendation — Centralize and protect packet-capture evidence with defined retention and access rules. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
Why practitioners should care: Arkime is most effective when it is treated as part of a deliberate network evidence strategy, not as a stand-alone search tool. Its value depends on capture quality, retention decisions, and disciplined access to the stored traffic.
What to watch for: Pay attention to where sensors are placed, whether capture coverage matches the traffic you actually need to investigate, and whether sensitive sessions are being retained longer than necessary. If capture data is broadly accessible, the monitoring stack itself may become an exposure point.
Practitioner takeaway: The strongest Arkime deployments are the ones that balance investigative depth with strict data handling, because the same visibility that helps defenders can also expose them if the capture store is left too open.