The Role of Fiber TAPs in Safeguarding Network Uptime

Internet outages can have a devastating impact on business performance and reputation – this year alone has seen large-scale incidents at major companies and organizations across multiple sectors. Similar disruptions have underscored the global importance of resilient digital infrastructure, including in highly connected markets such as Germany, where industrial manufacturing, supply chains, financial services, and public administration rely heavily on uninterrupted connectivity. It is therefore essential to monitor networks for potential problems or even outages as early as possible – not least to minimize their financial impact.

The cost of network downtime

One of the costliest impacts for businesses that fall victim to cyberattacks is network downtime – a 2024 study by Oxford Economics found that unplanned digital downtime (including application or infrastructure failures) costs Global 2000 enterprises a colossal $400 billion a year. According to the latest Economic Protection Study from German digital association Bitkom, the number of attacks on the German economy continued to rise in 2025, with 87% of companies affected by data theft, espionage, or sabotage, compared to 81% in 2024. The same study shows that the cost of these analog and digital attacks increased to 289.2 billion euros in 2025.

The uptime imperative in a digital-first economy

Maintaining uptime is a critical focus for any organization looking to maximize the productivity and value of its IT networks. In an economy like Germany's, which heavily prioritizes industrial digitalization, smart infrastructure, and sovereign cloud services, the impact of network downtime is particularly severe.

This is because a stable network is the digital backbone for vital services across both the public and private sectors. In hospitals, healthcare providers depend on reliable digital and network connectivity to retrieve patient information, monitor medical devices, share diagnostic results, and communicate across departments in real time. For commercial enterprises, it prevents costly bank outages and keeps e-commerce platforms fast enough to retain customers. Ultimately, keeping these networks running does not just prevent disruption – it optimizes processes, maximizes efficiency, and accelerates time-to-market, which is invaluable for large companies in industries like manufacturing.

Rising capabilities, rising threats

Beyond traditional cyber threats, the proliferation of generative AI projects is simultaneously introducing novel vulnerabilities while equipping bad actors with an increasingly sophisticated toolkit. For instance, IBM’s 2026 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index found that more than 300,000 ChatGPT credentials were put up for sale on dark web marketplaces in 2025.

With enterprises rushing to roll out AI systems, data centers are now deeply integrated into the business-critical architecture of many major companies and represent a growing target for attackers. This trend is particularly relevant in Germany, where the Federal Government set an ambitious goal of doubling overall national data center capacity and quadrupling AI/HPC capacity by 2030 in its new national Data Center Strategy, published on March 18, 2026. The German government positions a future-proof data center ecosystem as the foundation for economic growth, AI readiness, and the EU’s digital sovereignty. Yet, as the strategic importance of data centers grows, building robust defense mechanisms to protect them is no longer optional – it is a matter of national and corporate resilience.

The role of fiber TAPs in network monitoring

Network monitoring – the use of a system that constantly monitors and notifies a network for performance, usage, failing components, and outside threats – is increasingly key to ensuring company data centers stay secure and uptime is maintained.

A widely used (and cost-efficient) method of network monitoring is port tapping, a method of passively monitoring traffic being transmitted and received along a link in a network. While cyber security happens on all seven of the OSI layers, network taps like optical tapping modules operate on Layer 1 – able to help detect any network errors quickly, but without putting burden on the network connections. This reduction of network complexity and congestion is a key advantage.

Active vs. passive tapping: Weighing the advantages

Broadly, there are two main categories of network TAPs (Test Access Points): active and passive. An active TAP replicates/copies network traffic and sends it to monitoring tools, whereas a passive TAP simply splits the data stream, with one stream passing through the network and the other being evaluated by the system's software.

There are certain advantages to active tapping – it performs well in copper network environments where signal regeneration is more important and are more resilient when network signals are weak. Some active TAPs also offer advanced features that provide further failover options to maintain performance in challenging network conditions.

A significant advantage of passive TAPs is that they split optical signals, directing a defined portion – such as 20%, 30%, or 50% – to a monitoring device without introducing delay or latency. However, because they are an additional component in the transmission link, passive optical TAPs do introduce signal loss. This insertion loss must be accounted for in the network’s optical power budget.

Passive fiber TAPs are part of the structured cabling, so they allow you to retain use of ports on network switches, they do not require extra housings located in separate spaces or consuming additional rack space and they do not need to be disconnected during moves, adds, and changes so the live traffic will not need to be interrupted.

One note of caution for operators who utilize passive monitoring is the possible privacy risks. With traffic being captured in real time, unless your organization owns all of the infrastructure within a data center, there is a risk that tapping may give you access to other people’s data. The placement of the TAPs within the network is particularly important for this reason – ensuring data is only collected from certain servers in the data center.

Planning ahead

The German NIS2 implementation entered into force on December 6, 2025. As data center service providers are within scope of the applicable criteria, network monitoring will become increasingly important amid a stronger focus on cyber resilience across data centers and digital infrastructure. 

Passive network monitoring, particularly through fiber TAPs, offers an efficient solution to monitor traffic. Fiber TAPs enable monitoring tools to detect and investigate conditions earlier, which can support faster response and reduced downtime without burdening system performance and with minimal maintenance required.

Looking to the future, fiber TAPs can support multiple generations of optics, subject to compatibility across wavelength, fiber type, connector or interface, data rate, split ratio, and optical power budget. Within their specified optical range, passive TAPs are often protocol- and data-rate-transparent, providing flexibility for network evolution.

Cindy Ryborz is a Marketing Expert for Data Centers in the EMEA region. She began her career at Corning Optical Communications in 2008 in customer service. In June 2012, she moved to the Marketing Team and took over the implementation of Corning's Local Area Network strategy across the entire EMEA region. There, she worked closely with sales partners, members of Corning's authorized distributors, and certified installers, supporting them with technical expertise and marketing initiatives, before taking on the role of Strategic Marketing Manager for IBN/LAN in 2016 and DC Marketing Manager EMEA in 2018.