Learn about the Use Cases and Benefits of Security Analytics Tools
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
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
These forms of data can then be used for both immediate threat response and investigations.
Benefits of Security Analytics
Security analytics tools bring several key benefits to organizations:
Security Analytics Use Cases
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
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.