Transition to Big Data Processing

The advent of smartphones and SaaS systems has led to the generation of information at an enormous rate that cannot be handled by traditional data processing tools and methods. Nearly 90% of all data generated has been in the past two years (Kommandotech). The use of digital tools to analyze huge sets of data and retrieve essential information and interpretations of the data, forms the foundation of Big Data Processing. Smartphones and other devices generate vast amounts of data containing highly sensitive information like bank details, transaction details, and personal details too that could be retrieved from data storage using big data analytics, bringing about the need to create fail-safes that will prevent abuse of these tools.

Data Security using Big Data Analytics

Big Data Analytics has a wide number of applications in Data Security as it helps facilitate information retrieval from various security sources like firewalls, security devices, web traffic etc. Its ability to integrate unstructured data from multiple sources under a single analytical network enables superior data analysis and interpretation for companies and enterprises. A few of the applications of data security using big data analytics are:

• Network Flow Monitoring to Track Botnets – Analytical tools like MapReduce can identify and track infected hosts participating in a botnet by evaluating enormous amounts of NetFlow data within a short span of time, largely simplifying data processing as compared to traditional processing systems. It is the process of discovering patterns in large data sets using methods from artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is used to extract information from a data set and convert it to an analytical structure.

• Enterprise Event Analytics – Multinational Companies and enterprises generate overwhelming amounts of data every day, creating a need for highly efficient analytical tools to generate valuable information by analyzing data. An effective enterprise analytics strategy can provide a comprehensive vision and end-to-end roadmap for data management and analysis. It can help with risk management, mapping out a company’s data management architecture, identifying and removing redundant data, establishing responsibility and accountability, and improving data quality, among other things.
   
• Advanced Persistent Threats Detection – Advanced Persistent Threats are one of the most serious threats faced by organizations today. It is the strategized attack of specific, high-value assets in the digital architecture that operates in different modes like “Low profile” and “Slow” to avoid detection and prolonged execution respectively. Detection and tracking of such threats are cumbersome as huge loads of data must be evaluated to identify them, making big data analytics the ideal solution for tracking them. It is suitable for compliance needs and forensic investigations while also offering insights on user behavior that help track future threats efficiently.
• Data Sharing and Provenance – The use of big data analytical systems allow companies and enterprises to research and review the results of cybersecurity experiments conducted across the world. The Worldwide Intelligence Network Environment (WINE) (Cloud Security Alliance) provides a platform for data sharing and analysis to research on the field data aggregated online by Symantec. These platforms allow companies to test out and validate novel ideas on real-world data and compare different algorithms and systems against reference data sets to evaluate efficiency. Data Provenance is information about the origin and process of data creation.  Such information helps in debugging data and transformations, auditing, evaluating data quality and trust, modelling authenticity, and implementing access control for derived data.

Conclusion

Big Data Analytics holds the potential to unlock high levels of efficiency and performance from companies and enterprises as it simplifies data analysis of massive amounts of data and provides access to actionable information easily. The element of versatility it holds in serving various applications in data analytics makes it a critical requirement for data processing companies. Big data analytics helps in making better-informed decisions, improving the supply chain, operations, and other strategic decision-making areas.

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