Big data and machine learning: A perfect pair for cyber security?

Online
threats are emerging at a faster rate than ever. Between June and November of
2016, Malwarebytes discovered that almost 1 billion
malware-based incidences occurred. These malicious programs becoming
more sophisticated, and in turn, they’re harder to detect and mitigate quickly.

Many organizations simply cannot keep up with the pace of cyber
threats as there’s little time to build up defenses against one before another
appears. As a result, they’re increasingly turning to advancing analytics tools
to overcome this problem. Big data and machine learning could pair together to
bolster cyber security and better protect company assets.

With information generated by and collected from an ever-growing
variety of sources, big data analytics has already proven its value to a number
of organizations for dozens of use cases. In that sense, it’s no surprise
that cyber security is next, particularly when it comes to learning from
past attacks.

According to a report by the Ponemon Institute, organizations
are 2.25 times more likely to recognize a security incident within hours or
minutes of the event when they leverage big data analytics. These users
have a higher confidence in their ability to detect issues, and 65 percent of
respondents noted that using big data is essential to ensuring a strong cyber
security posture.

Virtually
any industry can use big data for better cybersecurity. In fact, 90 percent of
surveyed federal IT managers acknowledged that there were able to decrease
instances of malware, insider threats and social
engineering by using big data, according to a report by MeriTalk and Cloudera.
Another 94 percent plan to further their investment in facets of big data, such
as business intelligence and machine learning. These tools will help sift
through a vast amount of structured and unstructured information to deliver
valuable insights.

While big data can clearly lead to cyber security
improvement, it is often challenging to handle. The MeriTalk survey found that
nearly half of federal agencies are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of cyber
security data and cannot analyse it all in a timely manner. This could make it
much harder to achieve the type of visibility that organizations need in their
security infrastructure.

Adding machine learning into the equation might just be the
answer to using big data more effectively and improving cyber security beyond
measure. Machine learning solutions can quickly scan data to generate a picture
of historical patterns of positive and negative behaviours. Businesses can use
these capabilities to detect vulnerabilities, identify a breach as it’s happening
and correlate information from multiple sources. By uniting these tools,
organizations can successfully thwart attacks and decrease the chance of
experiencing breaches.

Machine learning and big data both have distinctive
characteristics on their own, but when combined, they can provide active threat
maps and even predict the next attack. In an article for Peerlyst, information
technology expert Mark Cutting noted that assimilated data might be enough to identify
a pattern of breaches to
consider an organization at risk of an attack.

However, while real-time analysis has greatly improved, there’s
still no solid platform to confidently predict when exactly a breach will
appear. Organizations should leverage a variety of machine learning and big
data analytical processes to detect attacks early and prevent damage. Using
information from these tools will help businesses create a strong strategy to
have the best advantage possible.

Cyber security is a challenge for many organizations due to
constantly advancing threats. By pairing big data with machine learning tools,
businesses will be able to detect issues as they occur and quickly mitigate
them to minimize potential damage. Trend Micro has been at the forefront of
using big data with machine learning within their Smart Protection Network™ and now
recently adding endpoint high-fidelity machine learning as part of XGen
security. Watch for these technologies to
form the basis of a capable cyber security strategy. Contact Trend Micro today
to learn more about these tools.