Understanding Security Intelligence technology – A brief intro

Understanding Security Intelligence technology – A brief intro

The world of IT is changing around us as we speak. The advent of revolutionary new technologies like cloud and big data and analytics has created a variety of new opportunities for IT teams to perform better, a fact that has been widely recognized by industry observers. However, this new level of opportunity also comes with a dark side, in the form of increased security threats.

To begin with, today's malicious hackers have learned to put advanced technology to use to support their own purposes. As a result, these groups have grown significantly more sophisticated in just the past few years. Groups that once functioned as Internet hooligans and petty vandals have today made the leap to become legitimate criminal organizations, highly coordinated and global in scale. Organizations that don't take special precautions to protect their valuable business data can safely assume that it's not a matter of if that data will be compromised, but when.

At the same time, new technology also has a lot to do with why today's organizations are so much more vulnerable than their predecessors. In the past, security technology was based around a centralized management platform, with a single corporate firewall that formed a perimeter around the company's systems and data. Today, when companies increasingly rely on cloud services provided by external organizations, systems and data have become more distributed in nature, meaning that the traditional security perimeter has become obsolete. You can't form a perimeter around your systems and data when your systems and data are everywhere. As a result, companies need to find a new approach to keeping their data safe, no matter where it is.

Enter security intelligence

In response to this new challenging security environment, vendors have created the security intelligence platform. Just as the business intelligence platform provides relevant data to help leaders make educated decisions about business operations, the security intelligence platform helps security professionals parse through reams of security data to find what they need in order to identify potential threats and keep their data safe.

One leading security intelligence platform on the market today in IBM QRadar. As an IBM Business Partner, Cima Solutions Group can help your company start taking advantage of all the solutions included in the QRadar security suite. In this three-part series of blog posts, we'll be exploring QRadar in more detail, giving you a closer look at what it is and how it can help your company prepare for the unique security threats facing it today.

What can security intelligence do for you?

Today's security professionals are at a disadvantage when it comes to stopping attacks, as hackers have the element of surprise over them. At the same time, everything these attackers do leaves a retraceable trail, creating the potential for security professionals to understand their actions within a wider context, and even take predictive action based on that understanding to stop attacks before they occur.

Using a security information and event management (SIEM) solution can provide massive amounts of data about hacker actions, but this data is all backward looking, and completely lacking in context. This is why SIEM forms only a small part of a security intelligence platform. A comprehensive security intelligence platform such as IBM QRadar can take the data provided by a SIEM solution and turn it into a source of competitive advantage for security leaders in their fight against the hackers.

Key features of security intelligence

  • Identifying the true threats based on all available security data
  • Consolidating data silos to provide complete, enterprise-level visibility in real time
  • Saving time and empowering employees by automating manual security tasks
  • Understanding and managing risk
  • Simplifying the process of complying with industry regulations

Download the IT Executive Guide to Security Intelligence

I hope this post provides a brief introduction to some of the capabilities of a security intelligence platform such as IBM QRadar. Check back soon for the next post in our series on security intelligence.

- Kevin


Leave a comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *