Big data analytics a useful security tool, says analyst

By Warwick Ashford – Security Editor – ComputerWeekely.com

The majority of companies using big data security analytics report a high business benefit, according to the Business Application Research Center

While data analytics from places like KNIME are already helping businesses to make sense of their data and use it to inform decisions within the company, big data analytics is a useful tool for enabling organisations to become more resilient in the face of increasing cyber attacks, according to a software market analyst and IT consultant.

“A recent survey found that 53% of organisations that are using big data security analytics report a ‘high’ business benefit,” said Carsten Bange, founder and managing director of the Business Application Research Center (Barc).

“The survey also found that 41% reported a ‘moderate’ benefit and only 6% said benefit was ‘low’, so there is fairly strong evidence of the business benefits of big data security analytics, ” he told Computer Weekly.

While adoption across the board is still relatively low, more than two-thirds of the more advanced companies surveyed are adopting advanced big data security analytics technologies, such as user behaviour analytics, the Barc survey revealed. For example, Splunk Technology is one of the leading big data analytics companies that is getting adopted by many companies. Hiring splunk professional services to implement and leverage the tools has become common in big organizations.

The more advanced companies, which classified themselves as having “much better” skills and competency in security analytics than their companies, represented 13% of the total sample, with 68% saying they have deployed user behaviour analytics.

“Of the 87% who did not consider themselves to be in the more advanced group, only 27% have deployed user behaviour analytics,” said Bange.

User behaviour analytics can help improve an organisation’s cyber security resilience, he said, by tracking user behaviour across all IT systems, for example, to identify whenever there are significant deviations from normal behaviour to warn of potential malicious activity.

“There is nothing new in being able to identify patterns of behaviour – most of the analysis techniques are 30 to 40 years old – but now we are able to apply them to extremely large data sets across multiple information technology systems,” said Bange.

“Organisations need to know there is now the technology to support this kind of analysis that can be very beneficial in the field on information security. It can enable organisations to become more resilient through data-driven security decision-making, planning and incident responses,” he said.

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