For many cyberattacks, the intruders were in a corporate or government network for weeks … or even months.
SAS Institute out of Cary, N.C. was founded in 1976. As the company’s fortieth anniversary approaches, SAS is entering the cybersecurity market. It’s hard to know which is more exciting.
SAS may have exactly what corporate cyber-fighters need to combat today’s increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals – behavioral analytics.
Behavioral analytics can help find a hacker’s movements and patterns that indicate malicious activity. The analytics are performed in real time to give the IT staff immediate situational awareness that allows it to take fast action and mitigate any potential risks that arise.
The big data and analytics market will reach $125 billion worldwide in 2015, according to research firm IDC.
Big data analytics tools will be the first line of defense, combining machine learning, text mining and ontology modeling to provide holistic and integrated security threat prediction, detection and deterrence and prevention programs, according to recent predictions by The International Institute of Analytics (IIA).
The Q2 2015 Cybersecurity Market Report published by Cybersecurity Ventures says that security will become the killer app for big data analytics. The report predicts that the big data security analytics space will be very competitive with even more new entrants over the next year and a crowded field of vendors battling for market share.
Enter SAS Institute.
SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. The $3 billion-plus software company counts 93 of the top 100 on the Fortune Global 500 as customers. SAS has nearly 14,000 employees serving its customers at 75,000 sites spanning 140 countries.
It could be argued that SAS is late to the game while other big data and analytics players saw security as a huge market much earlier. Splunk was an early mover that applied its big data, analytics and log analysis tools to security and captured a lot of early adopters – namely CISOs (chief information security officers) and IT security managers at big corporations.
The reality is that big data security analytics is a young market; and while SAS is fashionably late to the party, so are many corporations and federal agencies that need the technology the most. SAS is showing up to a party where it has long-standing relationships with a lot of the guests – chief information officers. And the CISOs either report up to the CIOs, or they have a dotted-line relationship.
It shouldn’t take long for SAS to have the ears of CISOs who can be one serious breach away from sending out their resumes.
Steve Morgan is founder and CEO at Cybersecurity Ventures and editor-in-chief of the Cybersecurity Market Report and the Cybersecurity 500 list of the world’s hottest and most innovative cybersecurity companies. Follow Steve on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.