blueAPACHE recently hosted our Insight Event in association with AlienVault. blueAPACHE Insight Events are an intimate affair limited to a single table and offers an amazing opportunity to engage personally with a leading industry expert, ask questions, gain insights and learn about global trends.
Joining us from AlienVault headquarters in the United States was Mark Allen, Senior Vice President of Technical Sales. Mark has been engaged in information security and system administration for over 15 years, with extensive experience in a variety of roles from help desk to litigation support to systems engineer and IT Director.
The discussion focused on the increasing complexity of security solutions in today’s threat landscape. The rapid growth in IT infrastructure of businesses has given rise to new and sophisticated threats like zero-day malwares, trojans, and advanced persistent threats which can put an organisation’s critical data and systems at risk. To combat these risks, many organisations are becoming more and more proactive. They are implementing the latest, most advanced technology measures to protect critical assets. This has led to a new challenge in bringing together and achieving real-time visibility across the bevy of security measures and products that organisations have in place.
Chris Marshall, blueAPACHE Managing Director, said “As the threat landscape evolves constantly, so does the technology available to combat them. The challenge today is no longer about having access to the latest security measures. Rather, it is about how organisations can leverage and interpret all the information at their disposal. Security data from disparate tools, when evaluated in isolation, may provide little insight. But the same data when correlated across the breadth of your security platform, from next-generation firewalls to endpoint security, can tell a very different story”.
Key learnings shared by Mark at the luncheon included:
- The need for organisations to have a threat intelligence database that offers real time information of active threats. Using this information within SIEM proffers new possibilities to correlate data. With built in correlation that is applied across all logs and data collected from security devices, servers, workstations and network traffic, organisations can match known incidents of compromise and expose suspicious activity in real-time.
- The importance of threat intelligence sharing and driving collaboration amongst the security community including vendors, threat researchers and security professionals to actively discuss, research, validate, and share the latest threat data, trends, and techniques, strengthening your defences while helping others do the same.
- In today’s world, technology alone is not enough to combat the threats that now face organizations of all types and sizes. Some of the worst security problems faced by companies often originate from employee behaviour. Appropriate employee education and training can develop a culture of security where staff are equipped to recognise and defend against social engineering attacks, thus becoming your organisation’s first line of defence.
blueAPACHE extends a thank you to all those who attended. To learn more about AlienVault and blueAPACHE’s complete security offering, contact our Account team.
If you would like to be invited to future blueAPACHE Insight Events, contact our Events team.