Behavioral Analytics: What It Is Significant to Enterprise CyberSecurity

Do you want to know why behavioral analytics is vital to your enterprise? Are you even aware of what behavioral analytics is? What are the threats that it can detect quickly? Is your business in danger because of these threats?

As your company grows, you also need to add more assets and users to your enterprise network. Your business workflows undergo permanent changes as you add applications and databases. These upgrades mean more efficiency and collaboration that will result in more profitability. However, they also translate to more liabilities in terms of cybersecurity.

Each user, digital asset, or application can be an accessible doorway for hackers to invade your network. Also, faulty programming or malice perpetrated by any user can be a threat inside your business. In both cases, they can damage not only your network but your business processes as well.

What can you do? Monitoring every user can be frustrating and overwhelming. Even if you have the workforce, your IT security team can’t sustain the demand. Maintaining visibility on applications and users is close to impossible as your enterprise grows. Is there hope? Yes, there is!

Behavioral analytics can help solve your dilemma efficiently and magnificently. Let us take you to a thorough discussion about the topic.

The Basics of Behavioral Analytics

Behavioral Analytics analyzes patterns, activities, and trends of applications and users. It searches for any quirk or habit in your workflows. Moreover, each user has its profile in the system. For instance, your employee, Arthur, uses “Database A” four times a day. Because of next-generation technology, behavioral analytics can also notice the endpoint he uses when he requests for access. It can record and store them in a behavioral baseline.

This behavioral baseline can establish if Arthur, for example, requests for access to Database B for ten times on a specific workday. Moreover, it can determine if he makes the request thousands of miles from his usual location. Your cybersecurity perceives both behaviors that are outside of Arthur’s baseline.

Moreover, the cybersecurity can prohibit the requests for access and alert your IT security team so it can perform the necessary investigation. Arthur may be on a business trip on that day and need to access some information not relevant to his position. Your team can inform your cybersecurity about any unusual circumstances to allow Arthur to access the files.

This scenario can also demonstrate a possible hacking using Arthur’s credentials and accessing sensitive enterprise data. If this is the case, your IT security team can trigger incident response and terminate the hacking procedure to return the account to Arthur’s control. Moreover, it can fix any vulnerability that it may discover. It will also follow the same process for data traffic, movements, and requests for applications.

Behavioral analytics leverages statistical analysis and machine learning to monitor the behaviors of your users and search for anomalies.

Why Is Behavioral Analytics Critical to Cybersecurity?

Jack Vance wrote The Moon Moth. It is a famous short story in the science-fiction genre. The plot revolves around an imposter who can alter his appearance but can’t conceal his habits and tastes.

This observation is also valid for actual hackers. In a report by Centrify, a privileged access management supplier, 74% of business transgressions start with a weakened privileged account. Moreover, some studies show that at least 80% of breaches start with jeopardized accounts. It means that hackers prefer to disguise themselves using one of your users.

The damage caused by hackers can be overwhelming. In theory, these hackers can cause reputational loss and downtime, especially when they destroy your network. They can tamper your users’ baseline behaviors. They can try to cause damage, but whenever they do so, behavioral analytics can sanction the attempts and stop them. It can trigger a response from your IT team to intervene.

Moreover, this cybersecurity must-have relieve your IT security of too much burden. The group may feel overworked with threat hunting and user requests. A cybersecurity staffing crisis may occur if things get out of control. Fortunately, behavioral analytics operates automatically and helps your IT staff streamline its investigations to save time.

Deploying Business Analytics

For your organization, you must first consider your size, user base, IT infrastructure, industry, and applications. Furthermore, you must think of your future growth and scaling plans for the next five years. It must be your initial step in any selection of cybersecurity solutions. Unfortunately, many companies neglect it.

A majority of the enterprises don’t select optimal performance over speed. They choose the solution that can solve their immediate problems adequately. Because of this way of thinking, you’ll realize that your IT infrastructure has many solutions with serious integration issues.

If you want long-term solutions to your cybersecurity issues, you must consider behavioral analytics. If you’ve decided to incorporate it in your enterprise, your next step is choosing a robust Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution.

Why Do You Need a SIEM solution?

A SIEM solution is the next-generation version of our topic. It includes user and entity behavioral analytics (UEBA). Furthermore, you can avail of threat intelligence feeds to help you detect any modern or expanded threats quickly.

You may think that a SIEM solution is complicated. You’re right! Moreover, the system works as a tool for log management and analysis that adds a behavioral analysis layer. Cybersecurity recognizes that it can’t deflect 100% of threats because the digital perimeters can’t do it. However, with a SIEM system, you’re able to detect threats that can wreak havoc to your enterprise.

Hackers are everywhere and waiting for an opportunity to strike. If you want to monitor and stop them, you can do so with the next-generation analytics and cybersecurity capabilities. A SIEM solution with UEBA and other significant capabilities is an excellent strategy to catch these hackers. It prevents them from intruding and cause severe downtime, which can compromise your reputation to the business world.