As breach rates climb and threat actors continue to evolve their techniques, many IT security teams are turning to new tools in the fight against corporate cybercrime. The proliferation of internet of things (IoT) devices, network services and other technologies in the enterprise has expanded the attack surface every year and will continue to do so. This evolving landscape is prompting organizations to seek out new ways of defending critical assets and gathering threat intelligence.

The Security Analytics Market Is Poised for Massive Growth

Enter security analytics, which mixes threat intelligence with big data capabilities to help detect, analyze and mitigate targeted attacks and persistent threats from outside actors as well as those already inside corporate walls.

“It’s no longer enough to protect against outside attacks with perimeter-based cybersecurity solutions,” said Hani Mustafa, CEO and co-founder of Jazz Networks. “Cybersecurity tools that blend user behavior analytics (UBA), machine learning and data visibility will help security professionals contextualize data and demystify human behavior, allowing them to predict, prevent and protect against insider threats.”

Security analytics can also provide information about attempted breaches from outside sources. Analytics tools work together with existing network defenses and strategies and offer a deeper view into suspicious activity, which could be missed or overlooked for long periods due to the massive amount of superfluous data collected each day.

Indeed, more security teams are seeing the value of analytics as the market appears poised for massive growth. According to Global Market Insights, the security analytics market was valued at more than $2 billion in 2015, and it is estimated to grow by more than 26 percent over the coming years — exceeding $8 billion by 2023. ABI Research put that figure even higher, estimating that the need for these tools will drive the security analytics market toward a revenue of $12 billion by 2024.

Why Are Security Managers Turning to Analytics?

For most security managers, investment in analytics tools represents a way to fill the need for more real-time, actionable information that plays a role in a layered, robust security strategy. Filtering out important information from the massive amounts of data that enterprises deal with daily is a primary goal for many leaders. Businesses are using these tools for many use cases, including analyzing user behavior, examining network traffic, detecting insider threats, uncovering lost data, and reviewing user roles and permissions.

“There has been a shift in cybersecurity analytics tooling over the past several years,” said Ray McKenzie, founder and managing director of Red Beach Advisors. “Companies initially were fine with weekly or biweekly security log analytics and threat identification. This has morphed to real-time analytics and tooling to support vulnerability awareness.”

Another reason for analytics is to gain better insight into the areas that are most at risk within an IT environment. But in efforts to cull important information from a wide variety of potential threats, these tools also present challenges to the teams using them.

“The technology can also cause alert fatigue,” said Simon Whitburn, global senior vice president, cybersecurity services at Nominet. “Effective analytics tools should have the ability to reduce false positives while analyzing data in real-time to pinpoint and eradicate malicious activity quickly. At the end of the day, the key is having access to actionable threat intelligence.”

Personalization Is Paramount

Obtaining actionable threat intelligence means configuring these tools with your unique business needs in mind.

“There is no ‘plug and play’ solution in the security analytics space,” said Liviu Arsene, senior cybersecurity analyst at Bitdefender. “Instead, the best way forward for organizations is to identify and deploy the analytics tools that best fits an organization’s needs.”

When evaluating security analytics tools, consider the company’s size and the complexity of the challenges the business hopes to address. Organizations that use analytics may need to include features such as deployment models, scope and depth of analysis, forensics, and monitoring, reporting and visualization. Others may have simpler needs with minimal overhead and a smaller focus on forensics and advanced persistent threats (APTs).

“While there is no single analytics tool that works for all organizations, it’s important for organizations to fully understand the features they need for their infrastructure,” said Arsene.

Best Practices for Researching and Deploying Analytics Solutions

Once you have established your organization’s needs and goals for investing in security analytics, there are other important considerations to keep in mind.

Emphasize Employee Training

Chief information security officers (CISOs) and security managers must ensure that their staffs are prepared to use the tools at the outset of deployment. Training employees on how to make sense of information among the noise of alerts is critical.

“Staff need to be trained to understand the results being generated, what is important, what is not and how to respond,” said Steve Tcherchian, CISO at XYPRO Technology Corporation.

Look for Tools That Can Change With the Threat Landscape

Security experts know that criminals are always one step ahead of technology and tools and that the threat landscape is always evolving. It’s essential to invest in tools that can handle relevant data needs now, but also down the line in several years. In other words, the solutions must evolve alongside the techniques and methodologies of threat actors.

“If the security tools an organization uses remain stagnant in their programming and update schedule, more vulnerabilities will be exposed through other approaches,” said Victor Congionti of Proven Data.

Understand That Analytics Is Only a Supplement to Your Team

Analytics tools are by no means a replacement for your security staff. Having analysts who can understand and interpret data is necessary to get the most out of these solutions.

Be Mindful of the Limitations of Security Analytics

Armed with security analytics tools, organizations can benefit from big data capabilities to analyze data and enhance detection with proactive alerts about potential malicious activity. However, analytics tools have their limitations, and enterprises that invest must evaluate and deploy these tools with their unique business needs in mind. The data obtained from analytics requires context, and trained staff need to understand how to make sense of important alerts among the noise.