What is Security Analytics?

Data Security Knowledge Base

Learn about the Use Cases and Benefits of Security Analytics Tools

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Security analytics is the process of using data collection, aggregation, and analysis tools for security monitoring and threat detection. Depending on the types of tools installed, security analytics solutions can incorporate large and diverse data sets into their detection algorithms. Security analytics data can be collected in several ways, including from:

Network traffic

Endpoint and user behavior data

Cloud resources

Business applications

Non-IT contextual data

Identity and access management data

External threat intelligence sources

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Recent technological advancements in security analytics include adaptive learning systems that fine tune detection models based on experience and learnings, as well as anomaly detection logic. These technologies accumulate and analyze real-time data that includes:

Asset metadata

Geo-location

Threat intelligence

IP context

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These forms of data can then be used for both immediate threat response and investigations.

Benefits of Security Analytics

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Security analytics tools bring several key benefits to organizations:

1. Proactive security incident detection and response.
2. Maintaining regulatory compliance.
3. Improved forensics capabilities.

Security Analytics Use Cases

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Security analytics has a variety of use cases, from improving data visibility and threat detection to network traffic analysis and user behavior monitoring. Some of the most common security analytics use cases include:

Employee monitoring

Analyzing user behavior to detect potentially suspicious patterns

Analyzing network traffic to pinpoint trends indicating potential attacks

Identifying improper user account usage, such as shared accounts

Detecting data exfiltration by attackers

Detecting insider threats

Identifying compromised accounts

Investigating incidents

Threat hunting

Demonstrating compliance during audits

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Above all, the primary goal of security analytics is to turn raw data from disparate sources into actionable insights to identify events that require an immediate response through the correlation of activities and alerts. In doing so, security analytics tools add a critical filter to the volumes of data generated by users, applications, networks, and other security solutions in place.