Security is becoming “a harder and harder battle to fight,” said Mark Debney, Principal Engineer, DevOps, at British Sky Broadcasting group plc. bSkyb uses Splunk Inc. products to scale their security tools and improve their chances of fending off a security breach. Splunk is particularly useful when searching for what Debney described as “slow-burn attacks” that “hide really well” within a system.

Even with Splunk, bSkyb works against security threats in something of a slow-motion fencing match: a counter attack may only works until aggressors figure out their next move, Debney explained.

To adapt to the never-ending onslaught of security threats, Debney said that bSkyb has a dedicated team well stocked with resources and time. Before adding Splunk to their arsenal, Debney said the team spend a lot for time “writing the application” that was intended to keep the company safe — they were “spending more time scaling than fighting the security attack.” Splunk enables the security team to automate a number of real time threat identification rules. Automating capabilities are particularly useful because bSkyb collects security data from a variety of devices, but Debney added that team members frequently review perceived threats to compensate for situations that technology may not consider.

See Debney’s entire interview below.

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Photo by SiliconANGLE