Bypass TAPs

Modern cyber security increasingly relies on inline security appliances such as Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), malware sandboxes, and advanced threat detection platforms to inspect and block malicious traffic in real time. 

While highly effective, these devices introduce an important consideration – they sit directly in the path of live network traffic. If an inline appliance fails, loses power, or needs to be taken offline for maintenance, it has the potential to disrupt business-critical services. 

Bypass TAPs eliminate this single point of failure, ensuring your network remains available even when security appliances are unavailable. 

Continuous health monitoring

Bypass TAPs don’t simply wait for a failure to occur – they continuously monitor the health of connected security appliances. 

Using heartbeat packets and other health-check mechanisms, the Bypass TAP verifies that inline devices are operating correctly and capable of processing traffic. If performance degrades or a failure is detected, traffic is automatically redirected according to predefined policies, ensuring rapid, automated protection against service interruption. 

The result is improved resilience, faster recovery, and greater confidence in the availability of critical security infrastructure. 

Protect security without creating risk

Inline security delivers powerful protection against cyber threats, but it should never come at the expense of network availability. 

Bypass TAPs enable organisations to deploy intrusion prevention systems, malware analysis platforms, and other inline security technologies with confidence, knowing that maintenance activities or unexpected failures won’t impact production services. 

They also simplify planned maintenance by allowing security appliances to be upgraded, patched, or replaced without requiring network outages. 

Designed for resilient security architectures

Bypass TAPs play an important role in resilient network visibility and cyber security architectures. 

Whether protecting enterprise networks, data centres, financial institutions, network operators, or national utilities, they provide the availability and resilience needed for business-critical environments where downtime is not an option. 

Combined with Network TAPs, Packet Brokers, and Lossless Packet Capture, Bypass TAPs help companies build highly available network visibility and security infrastructures that maximise both protection and operational resilience.