In the world of numerous risk and threat analysis solutions, how do you determine which one best fits your organization’s needs? What will keep your team and organization aware of not just ongoing events but get ahead of emerging threats? What are your strategic and operational objectives, and how can tools and technology help you to achieve those?
Augmented analytics is transforming how organizations prepare data, uncover insights in data, and share findings from those insights.
While it’s easy to compare and contrast the multitude of options today, it’s probably more useful to approach the decision by determining which elements of any solution are most relevant to your role and organization. We’ve compiled a list of priority features that tend to be relevant across different organizations.
1. Is it flexible enough to evolve in line with the threat landscape and your organization?
Finding a solution that’s right for your organization is often a balance between breadth and depth of the analysis and data available. What types of threats can be surfaced through the platform, using what sources? Does the solution have truly global coverage (and the expert team to back those claims), or is it more focused on a particular region? Similarly, does the methodology and technology that forms the foundation of the platform have the rigor to enable comparison across geographies but the flexibility to evolve to highlight and address emerging threats?
2. Does it provide data and information that is actionable?
Does your solution just provide alerts without any context or analytical insight? You need more than just alerts to stay ahead of threats. A valuable augmented analytics platform not only provides the raw data and sources of what’s happening but also provides context around why it’s happening, accompanied with considerations in navigating the situation.
3. Are customizations possible within the platform?
Particularly for those with small or dispersed teams, features that enable customization are a must. Having the ability to save locations where you have sites or travelers, build queries so you can access relevant information at the click of a button, or create alerts for specific, relevant keywords is crucial to a user’s ability to find and deliver relevant information.
4. Can it be integrated into wider solutions or incorporate proprietary data sets?
In many instances, organizations also have confidential or proprietary data and intelligence that is important to track alongside the information being provided by external providers/solutions. Not all risk and threat analysis solutions have the ability to easily integrate additional data streams – or integrate with existing platforms – so this could be a critical factor for some users.
5. How is analysis or information from the tool being verified?
While having artificial intelligence and machine learning models to assist in data compilation and content sorting is invaluable – even the most advanced solutions typically require some form of human intervention in the last mile to validate the accuracy and relevance of output. Who is doing this validation also matters. Having a true expert, with on-the-ground knowledge and experience, involved in this validation process is critical in reducing the number of false positives and wasted time chasing down sources or other forms of validation.
6. Can it “filter the noise” while still ensuring you receive relevant information?
There is an overwhelming amount of data and sources available today and only so much that a team of users can sift through, so the solution you choose should be able to process content to the point of providing pertinent information.
Having hundreds of irrelevant alerts isn’t of value either. So, looking for a solution that can provide the “right amount” of data is crucial: it needs to strike the balance between delivering enough data so that you don’t miss potentially important anomalous behavior but avoiding bombarding you with alerts that are irrelevant to your mission.
Is the perfect solution out there?
Yes and no. In the end, your augmented analytics solution must work based on how you and your team need it to work. What’s right for one organization isn’t necessarily right for another. The solutions and platforms on the market today are constantly evolving (as they should, given the nature of technology and the ever-changing threat environment) in the hopes of creating a “perfect” solution, but “perfect” means different things for everyone. While the list above is by no means exhaustive, it can serve as a launchpad for your research into how different risk and threat analysis solutions can help your organization monitor, manage, and mitigate threats.
