Given today’s booming cybercrime landscape, there is a general feeling among IT professionals that no organization is safe. In fact, it’s probably safe to assume that everyone is under almost continuous attack. A data breach can result in stolen passwords, compromised personal information or even physical consequences such as hotel patrons being locked in or out of their rooms. The list goes on and on.

Winning a Losing Battle With Cognitive Security

Many security professionals believe that incidents are increasing despite investments in defense products, tightened privacy regulations and heightened security awareness. Although organizations have grown more willing to share threat information, some executives see the defense effort as a losing battle and are unwilling to invest in security.

In the cyber world, it is difficult to commit a crime without leaving a trail. Of course, this data is but a droplet in a tsunami of threat information. How can security analysts parse through this overwhelming mass of data to pinpoint indicators of compromise (IoCs)?

Surely, protecting the perimeter and implementing proper segmentation by design are good practices, but advanced attacks can pass through these defenses like hot knives through butter. It’s important to observe what is happening inside the enterprise with a security information and event management (SIEM) solution, particularly one that can process external threat intelligence.

Our Best Defense Against Cybercrime

Since threat information is often unstructured and hosted outside the enterprise, an effective SIEM tool must be able to analyze millions of documents and billions of nodes. Enter cognitive security.

Cognitive computing has many potential security applications, such as tracing behavior biometrics to identities and their associated devices. IBM has made significant investments in cognitive technologies such as Watson for Cyber Security. Machine learning capabilities are cropping up in several new endpoint management solutions, application security systems and other defense products. Cognitive security represents our best defense against the increasingly sophisticated cybercrime landscape.

Watch the on-demand webinar: How Watson is Revolutionizing the Security Operations Center