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22 March 2021
- Data Security
Businesses around the world use data analytics every day to improve the efficiency of internal processes, production and customer service, while reducing costs. Do you know that you could use data analytics – specifically cybersecurity analytics – in order to ensure better security of your databases and other systems?
Fraud, malware, data theft – have you ever thought about how they can affect your company? Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t concerned with such matters. They buy the cheapest cybersecurity programs and don’t think of it further. On the other hand, there are many big companies that deal with large amounts of data and take cybersecurity very seriously. We highly recommend this approach – let us tell you what cybersecurity analytics is and how it can be used to improve your company’s cybersecurity. And if you need help making sure your company isn’t at risk, visit our Data Science Consultancy page to find out how we can help.
Cybersecurity threats – is your company at risk?
Today every company faces some cybersecurity threats. You operate with two important resources – money and data. Perhaps you’re already among those who have their apps and mobile services in the cloud. You log into a financial account on your computer instead of ordering transactions in the bank and maybe a few of your employees also have access to company accounts or credit cards. We do a lot of things on the Internet and as we do so, we’re always threatened in some way.
Fortunately, nowadays, there are plenty of effective protection tools which monitor your systems and detect malicious activities within corporate networks. Analytics is the key element in improving your company’s cybersecurity. The organized cybercrime networks that try to get access to systems or destroy them are getting better – you have to invest in the best, most modern solutions to ensure the safety of your IT infrastructure. Learn about the benefits of data analytics in cybersecurity.
Data analytics in cyber security
Cybersecurity analytics includes performing tasks such as:
- data aggregation,
- data attribution,
- data analysis.
Not all of the data your company collects is necessary for efficient protection, so your cybersecurity system will have to extract the information that may be useful. Technologies such as machine learning have made it possible to create really powerful solutions for cybersecurity. ML enables continuous monitoring of your company’s systems and can detect changes that don’t fit the usual patterns. This way, your security tools can spot a threat as soon as it appears.
Cybersecurity analytics allows for rapid detection of atypical events in your systems and helps your protection tools react fast to deal with the problem. Only very complex analysis performed almost in the real time is fast enough to protect your company against highly sophisticated attacks. You need this kind of technology, especially if you deal with big data and your systems are used by a huge number of users. Powerful solutions are able to run analysis on both current and historical data. Security analytics solutions use the newest technology and can help you protect your business resources from hackers and malware.
How to detect danger – behavioural analytics
Cybersecurity analytics tools use a lot of modern technologies to predict and spot attacks. Behavioural analytics works a bit like a security guard in the shop. When there is something weird going on, it reacts by sending alerts and applying some protection automatically. What kind of activity may be strange for such an analytics system? Your new analytics tool can detect log in events to some of your programs that should not be accessible or that a log in had taken place in the middle of the night, when it shouldn’t be used. It can also alert you about attempts to withdraw large amounts of money from your business account, etc.
Why is cybersecurity analytics important?
How could you apply cybersecurity in your organization to improve the safety of your resources? First of all, you need to know that no matter what kind of industry your company represents, you can take advantage of this type of analytics, as all companies operating on the Internet face significant risk. Running cybersecurity analytics will allow you to:
- Detect malicious activity in your systems quickly, and you’ll be able to defend yourself more efficiently.
- Recognize user accounts that could have been compromised and take necessary action.
- Analyse network traffic, spot unusual activity not fitting the patterns and learn about data exfiltration.
- Monitor and analyse user activity almost in real time for easier fraud prevention.
- Be aware of insider threats and react faster to data leaks.
The proper tools can use cybersecurity analytics not only to detect breaches and suspicious activity, but also to predict these threats and use powerful security solutions proactively. The right cybersecurity analytics system will use historical and current data to find the weak sides of your organization’s systems and automate protection of your company’s resources.
Benefits of cybersecurity analytics
Data analytics gives you business insights which you can use to improve the efficiency of your company. Cybersecurity analytics makes your organization safe. What are the most important benefits of applying this solution?
Alert priority levels
There are many ways to react to specific threats. Sometimes, you deal with critical situations, while at other times, the danger is not so big and doesn’t require immediate security team reaction. Thanks to data analytics, you (or your specialists) can be informed about the rank of alert, so you know which problem you should deal with first.
Abnormal activity detection
Historical and new data analysis allow you to identify patterns of activity in your organization’s programs and see if there are any outliers you should be concerned about in users’ behaviour or network traffic. “Out of order” activities can be a sign of a cyberattack or the vulnerability of your systems. You could use this information to strengthen your protection or prevent an actual attack.
Forensic incident investigation
With cybersecurity analytics you can identify threat origin, where or why the breach occurred or which accounts were compromised. This kind of information can be used to create a new, better cybersecurity strategy.
Regulatory compliance and automating workflows
The top security analytics tools will help your organization to comply with any important government and industry regulations your experts should know about. Moreover, the really powerful solutions provide your company with automated workflows for responding to spotted threats. Automation allows your company to react faster to potential dangers.
To sum up
Security analytics can be performed for all – small, medium and large – companies, although in the case of big data security analytics, the process is divided into two functional categories: PAM (performance and availability monitoring) and SIEM (security information and event management). PAM tools manage operations data, and SIEM tools deal with behavioural analysis, log and event management, while monitoring databases and applications. Put simply, with the right tools you can efficiently protect financial information, sensitive user data, databases, applications, your company software – all of it.
Each organization requires a different approach and the right tools to benefit from cybersecurity analytics. If you want to invest in proactive cybersecurity, contact us – our experts will be happy to tell you about the best methods to protect your business data.
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