Posts Tagged ‘event data’

In past blog posts I have often cited the need for a scalable event data warehousing capability to keep up with data collection and analysis requirements to address compliance and security operations. After hearing from dozens of customers about how they’re using SenSage to address their most critical security and compliance challenges, I’ve decided to focus less on event data warehousing and more on how our customers and partners are using SenSage. Towards the end of 2009, we searched for a way to net it out. In the end, it was pretty easy - Security Intelligence. This term sounds lofty at first, but once you learn how we think about it, I think you will find it very down to earth.

Of course, Security Intelligence is a variation of Business Intelligence or BI. BI solutions leverage the data management capabilities provided by data warehouses to deliver decision support information to business managers. Well, that’s exactly what Security Intelligence provides: essential decision support for security, risk management and compliance operations. Done right, Security Intelligence solutions are open, flexible, and scalable like traditional data warehouses while delivering deep security context.

Improved decision support is exactly what today’s security, risk management and compliance professionals are looking for. Detection and response to cyber-threats, regulatory compliance risks and investigating system failures all require thorough but simplified analysis of massive amounts of event data. Whether responding to an incident in real time or drilling through terabytes of related events to investigate the related context or improving a control, security professionals are asking for better decision support solutions.

As compared to Business Intelligence solutions, this is a bit of a niche play. These solutions are tailored to meet the needs of security, risk management and compliance professionals. But compared to the traditional SIEM and log management point products which are built on flat files, Oracle, or, worse, closed database management systems, Security Intelligence is a more flexible and sustainable approach.

SenSage is at the forefront of this technology, delivering Security Intelligence solutions that unify SIEM, log management and controls monitoring through a single analytics environment and data management architecture. Our customers are capturing the benefits of decision support in the security management context, leading to technology consolidation and process improvements not easily accomplished with the point products noted above.

We’ll be talking about Security Intelligence quite a bit in the coming months. Drop me a line, I’d love to hear your perspective.

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These days it seems everyone wants to talk about life in “real-time”. Last week, the San Jose Mercury News, ran a piece called the “Real-Time Web, the valley’s new obsession” (http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_13342816). The main theme of the piece, “What’s fast enough?” is thought provoking. In particular, I loved the trendspotter debate about whether Twitter was “real-time” or “near real-time”.

My reaction to the article?  I high-fived my son at the breakfast table. You see, for those of us in the security and data warehousing world, it’s great to see a pervasive, general business debate about the value of real-time analysis — issues we’ve been dealing with for years. Particularly in security, we’ve been debating (or some may say splitting hairs) about “What’s fast enough?” for years. To us, the conversation isn’t new at all; it’s based on real technology and real needs. It is evolving however, from a focus on “real-time vs. near real-time” to one focused on “real-time and all-the-time”.

Why? Five main issues are driving this evolution:

1.  New battles. Speed and accuracy are essential when it comes to new battles such as cyber threats and monitoring core intellectual property. For instance, in markets like healthcare and finance, the cost of a missed security breach can extend to irreparable financial or reputation loss. In defense, it can mean lives are lost.

2.  New data. The key to responding to these new battles is event data — time-stamped, append-only data — and it’s the fastest growing data on the web.

3.  New requirements. Proper response to these battles starts with detecting threats from terabytes of events as they are occurring – in real-time. Proper response extends to analysis of years of collected event data. In some cases, this means sifting through hundreds of billions of records, to find fraud, criminal activity, or, simply, errors. In each case, the need for wickedly fast and complete response is essential.

4.  New technologies. No surprise, vendors are stepping up with solutions to address this large, new market. SIEM and log management firms have been at this for years. More recently, data warehouse firms are joining the fray: Teradata with the launch of their Extreme Data Appliance 1550 and Netezza with their Mantra Compliance Appliance. Set Google Alerts for event data, log management, or real-time analytics and you’ll see what I mean. The vendors are coming.

5.  New expectations. I think the Merc article nailed this one. Thanks in part to the “instant on availability” of social media, SalesForce.com, Zillow, and dozens of other SaaS apps -we’re quickly getting trained to expect results without time-out for manuals or training sessions. In short order, these same expectations will be “table stakes” for business intelligence and security applications.

Last week, I was at an industry gathering hosted by Sierra Ventures – their annual CIO Forum. A few things stood out. The first was the CIO’s peer discussion about delivering “real-time analytics” and self-service to their business users. The second was Joe Tucci’s keynote session about the next wave of IT. In his talk, he stressed the importance of speed and self-service enabled by cloud computing as being at the heart of the next wave of IT. He said the change will be bigger than anything we’ve seen, will give unprecedented power to users, and will have a huge mortality rate for those who can’t adapt.

This echoes what we’ve heard from our customers.  They’re telling us this new wave can’t hit “fast enough”. They’re in the game and deploying solutions to make this vision of “Real-time, All-the-Time” a reality.

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