Anyone who’s been in the data security industry for more than a few years knows very well that certain disconnects can threaten effective data protection and serve as significant roadblocks for security teams. Here are my top three:

1. Lack of visibility: When those responsible for data security have no insight into what's happening to their sensitive data - who's creating or accessing it, where it's being sent or stored, or if is being adequately protected and managed.
2. Resource gaps: When you know your current people, processes, and technology aren’t providing adequate data protection but there’s no incident, breach, or other catalyzing event to justify the additional spend or change in direction.
3. Information/Technology silos: When you have different security systems providing information across dashboards galore - but none of them work together, leaving you hunkered down in manual data analysis mode trying to pull meaningful information from a barrage of big data, little data, alerts, events, etc.

A security information and event management (SIEM) solution like Splunk acts as the heart of your technology ecosystem, pulling in raw security data and pumping out meaningful, holistic analysis. This breaks down technology silos by providing a central platform to correlate data into meaningful events and can help provide the information needed to justify addressing security resource gaps.

While a SIEM is the heart of the ecosystem, the data coming out is only as good as the data going in. In true fashion of an ecosystem, all components are heavily dependent on one another. This is where APIs like our Digital Guardian App for Splunk Enterprise come into play. Providing deep visibility into all data movement and activity makes a SIEM that much more powerful. Combining these technologies and others can validate and prioritize security alerts, detect and mitigate advanced threats, find and stop malicious code before it can execute, improve incident detection and response times, and (perhaps most importantly) develop highly effective security policies based on the real security issues plaguing your organization.

Speaking of Splunk, Digital Guardian is participating in the Splunk>live! event taking place tomorrow, November 19th at the New York Marriott Marquis. There we will help explain just how DG fits into the mix for practitioners moving to a SIEM-central ecosystem. Stop by our booth to see the value for yourself.