Agiliance pumps up its Big Data risk management tools

Big data risk assessment specialist, Agiliance, has been busy of late and has now introduced two services aimed at easing the management of security threats in environments where large scale analytics processes play a key role. These are the first NIST Cybersecurity Framework Security Checklist and Best Practices Content Pack, and a partnership with CrowdStrike to significantly advance risk remediation.

The NIST CSF Content Pack is claimed to provide the market’s first commercially available Security Checklist and Best Practices guide in a risk management solution. It is fully integrated with the company’s RiskVision platform, which is in production today for continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM), managing a million assets, prioritising remediation for 20 million vulnerabilities, and conducting 100 million daily control checks.

In response to escalating cyber-threats to the USA’s economy and national security, and mandated by the February 2013 White House Executive Order 13636, NIST released its Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurityin February 2014. However, applying the NIST Cybersecurity Frameworkadds to the volume, velocity, and complexity of data feeds that must be analysed, normalised, and prioritised.

“Applying all of the outlined standards, guidelines, and practices of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework is a considerable challenge that requires the rethinking of existing processes, including the tools organizations use to gather and analyze data”

Using the Content Pack for RiskVision, organisations can gather, score, and review their data- and survey-driven control assessment results. Furthermore, they can identify their control gaps, take the necessary remediation actions, and gain a comprehensive measurement of their cyber security risk posture. The Pack incorporates all five functions of the Framework Core for managing cyber security risk – Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover – and automates assessment of an organisation’s current cyber security posture, definition of its target cyber security posture, identification of areas for improvement within the context of a continuous and repeatable process, assessment of progress toward the target cyber security posture, and information sharing among internal and external stakeholders about cyber security risk.

“Applying all of the outlined standards, guidelines, and practices of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework is a considerable challenge that requires the rethinking of existing processes, including the tools organisations use to gather and analyse data,” said Torsten George, vice president of worldwide marketing and products at Agiliance. ”RiskVision and the Agiliance NIST CSF Content Pack combine pre-packaged intelligence with the controls, data automation, data aggregation, and a workflow engine needed to automate security risk management and strengthen cyber resilience.”

Agiliance has also announced the interoperability of RiskVisionwith CrowdStrike Falcon Intelligence. The strength of CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence platform extends RiskVision’s most comprehensive threat correlationcapabilities in the industry. Data from Falcon Intelligence will enable customers to minimise their cyber risks posed by external threats as well as respond and remediate swiftly to emerging threats.

“Correlating actionable security intelligence and automated indicator feeds with key risk indicators helps organizations to prioritize their resources and focus on those critical threats that pose the highest risk.”

As targeted attacks and their impact become more serious, it is vital to overlay security, infrastructure, business, and market data with threat intelligence to enable security operations teams to focus their remediation efforts on those threats that represent the highest risk for their business. RiskVision does just that, as it aggregates critical intelligence from CrowdStrike Falcon Intelligence with other operational IT and security data to continuously assess a company’s risk and compliance posture.

“Indicators of risk are difficult to identify when attackers, their capabilities, and activities are unknown,” said George. “Our partnership with CrowdStrike provides our customers with the insight required to understand the impacts of individual threats on business operations, prioritise response actions, and manage remediation workflows.”

The integration of CrowdStrike Falcon Intelligence with RiskVision allows for the correlation of detailed technical and strategic analysis of adversary capabilities, indicators, attribution, and intentions with automated risk management of big data feeds from vulnerabilities, events, controls, and policies. RiskVision already automates the correlation of more than 65+ dedicated data feeds and millions of big data objects.

“Combining RiskVision’s big data risk capabilities with Falcon Intelligence provides an offering that allows organizations to tackle today’s fierce threat landscape,” said Scott Fuselier, vice president of worldwide sales and alliances at CrowdStrike. “Correlating actionable security intelligence and automated indicator feeds with key risk indicators helps organisations to prioritise their resources and focus on those critical threats that pose the highest risk.”