15 Easy Ways to Integrate, Orchestrate, and Expedite Security Operations
Securing government networks and systems takes a village. Keeping pace with attacks and shortage of security talent has driven security operations to pool data resources and orchestrate actions across vendors, open source projects, and internal development efforts. It’s a community effort. Sharing threat information and codifying procedures to better fend off the enemy with no face. This kind of intel also improves detection efforts and response through collaboration across systems.
The village model has its advantages. But DLT partner, McAfee, sees some real challenges in this approach.
Let’s start with the most obvious problem – complexity. You spend years building up a security and IT infrastructure of disparate products and systems, all with fragile connections between them. Sometimes these integrations don’t do what you had in mind or your organization’s needs change (especially in the vulnerable government cyber space), and your vendor doesn’t keep up.
The other problem is that many of these integrations are API-led, making them a pain to build and a downright slog to maintain. Integrating security products also requires negotiation with the vendor and lengthy implementation – faced with ever-evolving threats, the government certainly doesn’t have time for this.
Response times to critical events can also be problematic in this community model. Traditional REST APIs don’t efficiently support real-time notifications. Plus, there’s no easy way to access vital data, such as context or emerging threat intelligence, or a simple way to invoke another service, so apps can’t apply any insights to fend off emerging threats.
That’s quite a set of hurdles.
But you can overcome much of this complexity. McAfee has developed the McAfee® Data Exchange Layer (DXL) so you can quickly integrate data and actions for real-time security operations.
DXL does away with all the complexity of integration and enables high-speed communication between applications. Having been used to connect Intel Security and Intel Security Innovation Alliance partner products, DXL has matured so that developers can replace 1:1 integrations over proprietary APIs through OpenDXL and a single link to the McAfee DXL application framework.
What is OpenDXL?
OpenDXL allows developers and scripters to connect products throughout an organization’s security infrastructure and accelerate the threat defense lifecycle. With access to data and triggers from multiple sources delivered in milliseconds over the McAfee DXL communications fabric, everyone benefits from more precise analysis and orchestration of security actions with IT systems. OpenDXL also provides opportunities for more rapid and flexible security infrastructure. Enterprises have a way to achieve integrations between competing products as well as niche applications and open source projects, connections that would typically not occur under standard market conditions.
To learn more about what makes OpenDXL unique, learn how it works, and see an example of how it can help automate six products from four vendors, read the OpenDXL Idea Book: 15 Easy Ways to Integrate, Orchestrate, and Expedite Security Operations.
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