The increasing global internet penetration and rise in the number of devices connecting simultaneously has led to a truly digital world. While digitalization has its benefits for both consumers and enterprises alike, it has a dark side to it with a proportional increase in sophisticated cyber-attacks.

Internet Security Company Malwarebytes in its “State of Malware” report for second half of 2016 revealed that almost one billion malware-based incidents occurred between June and November of 2016. Add to it the fact that ransom ware alone has accounted for 66% of malware payloads in November 2016 up from 18% levels in January 2016, a phenomenal increase of 267%.

In such an environment filled with threats and technical vulnerability, organizations and business enterprises are focusing their energy on cyber analytics to protect their assets and consumers from any such threats in the future.

Data Analytics and cyber security- The way ahead

The future of cyber security has a deep five connect with cyber analytics. With hackers and scammers constantly innovating new malwares to breach various networks and security programs, the role of cyber security experts have now changed to a proactive one. A well devised security program should now anticipate the future moves and safeguard the data and networks from any such hacking attempt. Cyber analytics allow extensive data security as it helps the enterprise focus on PDR or prevent, detect, response based solution.

A more responsive detection program is made possible with the help ofdata analytics. With more number of multiple devices connecting to an enterprise network at any given point in time, the threat perception remains significantly high. Big data analytics allows security experts to monitor all such interactions in real-time and tracing any sudden change in behavior of network or associated or connected devices, etc.

Cyber analytics backed by big data help security experts understand the attempts being made by any potential security breach in their system. With enhanced information security capabilities, security experts can then take a proactive role in ensuring all such data breach attempts are anticipated well in advance, evaluated, and then responded effectively.

Risk assertion and prevention

Data security is today not just a post theft exercise. Like all other walks of life emphasis is today strongly on avoiding any kind of data breach. While an organization’s security team may avoid multiple data theft attempts, even one successful data breach is big enough to let all the good work call for nothing. To counter for any such eventuality, data security experts make use of cyber analytics as it helps them evaluate their risk assertion and then chalk out effective preventive strategies.

For example, by adopting a proactive approach of risk assertion security experts make use of big data analytics to check for any anomalies in device behavior at all times. Every device that is allowed to connect to the organization is monitored and any excessive requests like sudden responses using any Trojan horses or breach of security by accessing employee devices can be monitored. Similarly, big data analytics helps in tracing any sudden changes in behavior patterns of employee or contractor data. Any employee or contractor suddenly downloading large volumes of data can raise the red flag for the security experts to look in detail, thanks to big data and cyber analytics.

Big data analytics also allows security experts to check for various data attributes and then correlate the same for possible nature of attacks. This way security teams can be better prepared for the kind of attacks from a ransom ware to anOS based one, etc. Detecting anomalies in the networkis also possible with big data analytics ensuring all consumer data is always secure while dealing with the organization.

Big Data Analytics and faster PDR timelines

Usually, in a cyber attack security experts are often found lacking in evaluating the nature and the extent of attack till a long time. With the use of cyber analytics, security experts are able to offer a more responsive approach thanks to a faster time scale analysis. As a result experts can quickly trace the attack path used by hackers and respond in quick time to block any additional attacks and other possible vulnerabilities.

Conclusion: Big data and cyber analytics offer a deeper insight into possible security breaches allowing organization to build secure networks and systems to avoid any data theft attempt in the future.