Why Cool Dashboards Don’t Equal Effective Security Analytics

Mark Twain once said, “Data is like garbage. You’d better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.”

This statement rings true in today’s cybersecurity landscape. Security professionals are inundated with a flood of data, and often, they don’t know how to make sense of it. To add to the confusion, many security vendors offer “cool dashboards” that, while visually appealing, fail to provide actionable insights into the data collected from their software.

The problem with these dashboards is that they often prioritize aesthetics over functionality, providing a superficial overview of security events without delving into the necessary details. When it comes to cybersecurity, the need for real, in-depth analytics cannot be overstated.

Security professionals don’t need slick dashboards; they need robust analytics to investigate and understand security events. During a security event, the aesthetics of a bar chart or the attractiveness of a graphical user interface (GUI) becomes irrelevant. What matters most is understanding what is happening, why, and how to resolve it swiftly and effectively.

In the face of a security event, navigating multiple systems and dashboards for the same vendor can be daunting and time-consuming. What professionals need is a single, comprehensive analytics view that reveals what is happening across the platform. The era of disparate products offering different analytical dashboards should be left in the past.

Enter Imperva Attack Analytics. This innovative approach uses advanced analytics to analyze and interpret security events, providing actionable insights that professionals can use to respond effectively. Unlike traditional dashboards, attack analytics presents data in sleek bar charts, and it identifies patterns and correlations that can help security teams respond to threats more effectively.

Attack analytics go beyond the surface level, delving deep into the data to identify related events and reveal the bigger picture. By factoring in multiple attributes, attack analytics can find correlations between events, helping to enhance security mechanisms and enabling a fast response to emerging threats.

Moreover, attack analytics can help security professionals understand the security value provided by their systems by showing the volume and severity of intercepted attacks. This kind of in-depth analysis is what security professionals need to navigate the complex and evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats. These data-rich dashboards are also crucial for immediate response to security events when time and resources are limited. 

In conclusion, while cool dashboards may be visually appealing, they often fall short when providing the in-depth, actionable insights that security professionals need. In contrast, analytics offer a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of security events, enabling professionals to respond effectively and efficiently. In the face of evolving cybersecurity threats, the need for advanced robust analytics has never been greater.