Cloudy with a Chance of Extremely High Alert Accuracy

You can tell it’s raining by sticking your head out the door; but what’s the likelihood of it stopping in the next hour? What’s the temperature and relative humidity? Suddenly the need for analytics is apparent. Without it, the chance of getting soaked on any given day would dramatically increase.

Analytics makes the world go ‘round. So why shouldn’t it be the same in security? According to our CISO Benchmark Study, only 35% of respondents said it was easy to determine the scope of a compromise, contain it, and remediate it. This is where analytics can come in, helping to turn the tide. Analytics are becoming increasingly critical for security, and when done right, can significantly improve an organization’s risk posture.

With so much at stake, cybersecurity should be seamless, precise, and manageable. Unfortunately, as I elaborated on in my last blog post, that’s not often the case. Organizations have become accustomed to purchasing and using too many security products without having enough people to manage them – resulting in more alerts than can be digested.

Forecast: Advanced Analytics

We understand the importance of delivering security intelligence that can be easily obtained, understood, and responded to in a timely manner. Seventy-seven percent of our customers say that our industry-leading Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) solution, Cisco Stealthwatch, has reduced their time to detect and remediate threats from months to hours, and has provided a fast return on investment.

Stealthwatch provides enterprise-wide visibility from the private network to the public cloud – including from endpoints and encrypted traffic. It delivers comprehensive situational awareness to help organizations detect, prioritize, and mitigate threats in real time.

Customers Enhance Security with Stealthwatch

The in-depth visibility and robust analytics provided by Stealthwatch translate into high-fidelity alerts, dramatically decreasing the need to manually sift through massive amounts of information to pinpoint a security threat. In fact, our customers consistently rate greater than 90 percent of the alerts they receive from Stealthwatch as “helpful,” meaning they lead to something that definitely needs attention. Minimizing noise and zeroing in on what’s most important is a requirement for effectively protecting today’s complex, modernized environments.

According to the Durham County Government, Stealthwatch has increased visibility and detection of internal threats by at least 80% and has reduced incident response time by 90%.

According to Dimension Data, Stealthwatch has decreased incident response time by over 100 days.

And with Stealthwatch, J. Crew Group can now respond to incidents in 10-15 minutes.

A Platform Approach to Security

Stealthwatch is part of a portfolio of products that work together as a team, learning from each other and improving each other’s effectiveness. For example, Stealthwatch integrates with our incident response portal, Cisco Threat Response, and our security policy management tool, Cisco Defense Orchestrator. We also integrate third-party solutions to deliver more thorough and impactful defenses.

Stealthwatch leverages many aspects of our platform approach to security – including integration, automation, and machine learning – to harden networks and simplify protection. It’s like knowing with confidence what the weather will be like all day and having exactly the right kind of clothes to stay comfortable and dry.

Learn More

If you are joining us this week at Cisco Live in Barcelona, come check out Stealthwatch at one of the sessions or experience a demo within the Security area at the World of Solutions. Or, learn more about Stealthwatch here and take our free 2-week visibility assessment to see how powerful security analytics can quickly surface threats that might be lurking within your network.