System time zone

The time zone setting in the Administration > General Settings page Time Configuration section is used for the system itself.  It is used on the:

  • Administration > Security Profiles page

  • Administration > Flow Log page

It is also the default time zone for new user accounts.

The NetProfiler develops security profiles of typical traffic characteristics during user-defined times, such as weekdays, weekends, business hours, night hours, holidays, and so forth. Traffic reports and security policies that compare current network behavior to behavior that is typical for the time of day, day of the week, etc. use these security profiles as historical baselines for typical network behavior. Therefore, it is generally most useful to set the system time to the time zone in which you want to specify security profiles for collecting baseline data for the security analytics.

This could be the time zone of the location in which the most traffic is occurring, or the time zone in which the most network operations people are working, or the time zone that your organization uses for logging events for possible future analysis.  

Time Configuration

Security profiles

Administration > User Preferences page