1. A method of identifying targets for monitoring, comprising: obtaining a user-defined filter map, the user-defined filter map having one or more filter rules for matching against network traffic when the user-defined filter map is used by a network system to process the network traffic; and determining a set of one or more targets by a processing unit based at least in part on the user-defined filter map, wherein the processing unit comprises a target selection module configured to access a list of available targets from a database, and select the one or more targets from the list of available targets based at least in part on the user-defined filter map, wherein the target selection module is configured to select the one or more targets from the list of available targets based on: C = { subset ⁢ ⁢ of ⁢ ⁢ V ⁢ ⁢ associated ⁢ ⁢ with ⁢ ⁢ one ⁢ ⁢ or ⁢ ⁢ more ⁢ filter ⁢ ⁢ components ⁢ ⁢ or V , ⁢ R = ⋂ i = 1 m ⁢ C i , ⁢ and ⁢ ⁢ F = ⋃ j = 1 n ⁢ R j wherein V represents the list of available targets.