continuous-monitoringThe Free Dictionary’s definition of “sitting on a goldmine” implies that one is in control of something that either is—or has the potential to be—valuable. Experts now believe that machine-generated data may have the same effect on big data, presenting a golden opportunity for your organization’s enterprise.

Splunk’s VP of Business Analytics, Tapan Blatt, sat down recently for a Q&A session with TechRepublic. In that interview and follow-up email correspondence, Blatt identified current trends in operational intelligence software and the benefits of using it for cybersecurity:

What are the key elements of OI capability for an enterprise?

Operational Intelligence gives you a real-time understanding of what’s happening across your IT systems and technology infrastructure so you can make informed decisions. It covers four key areas:

  • Search + Investigation: Find and fix problems, correlate events across multiple data sources, and automatically detect patterns across massive sets of data.
  • Proactive Monitoring: Monitor systems in real time to identify issues, problems, and attacks before they impact your customers, services, and revenue.
  • Operational Visibility: Gain end-to-end visibility across your operations and break down silos across your infrastructure.
  • Business Insights: Make better-informed business decisions by understanding trends, patterns, and gaining operational intelligence from machine data.

Given the heightened concerns over security from the news in 2014, how can an OI approach assist an organization with cybersecurity?

In today’s connected world, all data is security-relevant. Pre-filtering data or limiting security insights to a pre-defined set of correlations is a recipe for disaster.

An Operational Intelligence approach is the foundation for big data security solutions that can adapt to advanced threats and changing business demands. Simple monitoring of traditional security events is no longer enough. Security practitioners need broader insights from new data sources generated at massive scale across IT, the business, and in the cloud. Operational Intelligence can assist in staying ahead of external attacks, malicious insiders, and costly fraud demands, continuous security and compliance monitoring, fast incident response, and the ability to detect and respond to known, unknown, and advanced threats.

For more details on operational intelligence, see the full TechRepublic article.

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Machine-Generated Data: Potential Goldmine for the CIO

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