Federal Employees Say Agencies are Using Big Data Analytics for Cyber-Security

A recent report has highlighted that the federal employees opine that their agencies are using big data to ensure better cyber security. Many agencies still have to deal with cyber attacks as they are unable to analyze full data. Some agencies are also overwhelmed by the volume of cyber security data.

Federal Employees Spill the Beans of Cyber Security in Agencies

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The report was generated by MeriTalk and it was sponsored by Cloudera. The report states that about 81 percent of federal employees admitted to the fact that their agency is using big data in some capacity analytics for attaining better cyber security. The reports also stated that 59 percent of the respondents feel that the agency they work for deals with one cyber breach a month on an average as the agencies are unable to fully analyze data.

Mapping the Increase in Use of Big Data

The survey report stated that there has been a lot of increase in the usage of big data by the agencies to ensure cyber security from 2013 to 2016. This information was shared by a subject matter expert working at Cloudera, Rocky DeStefano who added that the adoption of big data in such a short time was a big surprise and it indicates that there is proof of real life production success of such programs.

About 90 percent of respondents also accepted that the use of big data has reduced the number of breaches while 84 percent respondents said that agencies were able to beat a cyber attack due to the latest cyber-security analytic tools. DeStefano says that it clearly shows that the agencies are finding value at the earlier stages of deployment.

The Challenge

The survey also pointed out that 88 percent of respondents believe that they face challenges in taking out cyber intelligence from data and that their top challenge was the sheer volume of data. They also confessed that over 40 percent of data goes unanalyzed thanks to this problem.

Lack of Cyber Security Information

It was also highlighted by the federal employees that about 33 percent of the agencies don’t even have a system in place that could gather cyber-security information they need. This information is vital to control and prevent the cyber attacks in the future. About half still think that the volume of the cyber-security data is overwhelming.