Can User Behavior Analytics Do a Better Job of Protecting Your Organization's Data?

Why? In part it's because the perimeter itself is eroding. The benefits of mobility and round-the-clock productivity are simply too compelling for most organizations to ignore, and the result is that more and more devices are accessing enterprise networks. Organizations continue to outsource more functions to non-employee contractors and vendors, who often require network access to be effective. And the much-hyped “Internet of Things” (IoT) opens networks up to yet another huge class of “authorized devices,” which can be exploited to orchestrate significant mischief, as the recent hacker attack on the Internet infrastructure company Dyn demonstrated so decisively, achieving sustained disruptions of service from some of the world's most prestigious online properties, including Netflix, Twitter, Amazon and Tumblr.

So, while spending at many organizations still tends to focus on perimeter defenses, security experts have begun to face the reality that it is nearly impossible to keep bad actors out of your network, and are turning their attention to better ways of mitigating threats posed by intruders once they've hacked their way in. Of course, it's not just hacker-instigated breaches from which we need to defend. Recent surveys suggest that insider threats — from trusted employees and other authorized users in possession of legitimate credentials — account for somewhere between 20% and 60% of today's data breaches, and perimeter defenses are not equipped to stop them. Awareness of the potential danger of insider attacks, in fact, is an important factor in an upsurge in interest among cybersecurity professionals in user behavior analytics (UBA).