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The Benefits of Splunk User Behavior Analytics (UBA)

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Given the rapid evolution of cyber threats, it’s understandable that many businesses struggle to predict where their next threat will come from. However, with the help of Splunk UBA, companies can gain a better understanding of their security posture and be better prepared for potential threats. 

Splunk User Behavior Analytics, or Splunk UBA, is an advanced analytics solution that uses the best security strategies to detect and mitigate potential threats in real time. It is an excellent tool for devising behavioral baselines, uncovering APTs using advanced correlation, detecting malware infections, and performing peer group analysis. 

When you engage in Splunk UBA, you can rest assured that your IT infrastructure will remain unfazed by the latest threats emerging from both internal and external roots. 

In this article, we’ll cover the following topics:

  • What Splunk User Behaviour Analytics is,
  • Benefits of implementing Splunk UBA, and
  • Splunk UBA data sources.


With that said, let’s get started.

What is Splunk UBA?

Splunk UBA is a robust security solution that leverages advanced analytics techniques and machine learning algorithms to provide real-time visibility into your user behaviors. 

Splunk UBA can detect anomalies and suspicious behavioral patterns across your users, applications, and devices that could indicate a potential security threat.

Benefits of Implementing Splunk UBA

Implementing Splunk UBA offers numerous benefits to organizations looking to enhance their security posture.

Here are some key advantages of implementing Splunk User Behavior Analytics in your business.

1. Negate Insider Threats

Although it is well known that the most significant security threats to organizations today often originate from malicious intent, neglect, or human error, most businesses can’t do much about it. 

Such inaction can cause a high frequency of nefarious internal attacks resulting in severe reputational and financial damage for your organization that can easily be avoided. 

Instead, Splunk UBA is an ML-driven solution that will provide your organization with a comprehensive view of your user behaviors, teams, and other internal risk sources. If an internal source attempts to harm your IT infrastructure, you will be instantly alerted about it. 

Essentially, Splunk User Behaviour Analytics will observe, monitor, and assess these behavior patterns for anomalous actions to uncover and resolve threats before they can harm your infrastructure. 

The robust ML algorithms under the hood of Splunk UBA play a significant role in enabling it to identify and take quick, decisive, and effective action to quash such anomalies.

2. Improved Threat Detection

The problem with traditional threat detection tools is that they work on predetermined rules that attackers can easily circumvent. 

Instead, use Splunk User Behaviour Analytics, which has advanced Machine Learning techniques and behavior-based threat detection mechanisms that make it a significant challenge for attackers to evade. 

Splunk User Behaviour Analytics is a powerful tool that can help businesses detect and respond to threats more effectively. By leveraging advanced machine learning techniques and behavior-based threat detection mechanisms, Splunk UBA makes it significantly harder for attackers to evade detection. 

With Splunk UBA, businesses can gain a better understanding of their security posture and quickly identify suspicious behavior, enabling them to take proactive steps to mitigate potential threats. If you’re looking for a more robust security solution, Splunk UBA is definitely worth considering.

Splunk UBA can also single-handedly perform peer group analytics and multiple-entity behavior profiling analytics to detect anomalies from multiple users, service accounts, devices, and applications across the organization’s IT infrastructure. Its behavioral threat detection system is entirely automated and will not require signatures or human intervention for analysis. 

When the Splunk UBA platform detects any unusual behavior patterns, it will immediately notify you of the potential breach. It allows your security teams to respond quickly and effectively, reducing the potential impact of any security incidents. 

Such capabilities of Splunk UBA make it stand out as a more effective solution than traditional security systems.

3. Reduce Time to Respond

When a security breach does occur, you should have a system capable of instantaneously responding and remediating the event to minimize damage to your organizational data and infrastructure. 

With Splunk User Behaviour Analytics, you can automate the entire threat detection and response process and significantly reduce the time to respond to potential breaches. 

Splunk UBA will provide your security teams with timely automated alerts, reports, insights, and recommendations on potentially suspicious activity to mitigate the issue before it is allowed to go out of hand. 

Splunk UBA Data Sources

Splunk UBA leverages data from the Splunk platform to uncover internal and external threats to your infrastructure, which is why importing critical data sources is essential. 

Adding Splunk UBA data sources requires you to: 

  1. Ensure you verify that you have the proper permissions to connect to and acquire data from the Splunk platform.
  2. Check which data source types Splunk UBA supports.
  3. Identify all assets in your environment. 
  4. Import your HR data into Splunk UBA.
  5. Import your identity and asset data into Splunk UBA.
  6. Configure lists for users, IP addresses, and domains allowed and denied that enable Splunk UBA to generate or suppress anomalies. 
  7. Ingest the data using connectors from the Splunk platform into Splunk UBA. 
  8. Assess and verify that you have successfully added all your data sources. 

With these eight simple steps, you can add a wide range of data source types with which Splunk UBA can integrate. 

Let us look at some of these Splunk UBA data source types.

1. Active Directory

Splunk UBA will monitor and track user behavior changes such as login attempts, changes to user privileges, and account lockouts within the active directory.

2. Network Traffic

Splunk UBA will monitor your network traffic detect anomalies, and notify your security teams of connections to suspicious IP addresses and unusual data transfer patterns that could indicate a potential threat.

3. Cloud Applications

Splunk UBA will analyze your user activity within cloud applications, including Salesforce, Office 365, and Box, for suspicious activities such as failed login attempts, modifications to user permissions, and restricted file access.

4. Identity and Access Management Systems

Splunk User Behavior Analytics can monitor suspicious activity, such as modifications to user roles, access rights, and permissions within your identity and access management systems, such as Ping Identity and Okta. 

It will provide your security teams with customized reports on critical events across account management, Identity Provider, Service Provider, and OAuth Authorization Server transactions.

5. Endpoint Logs

It can analyze logs from endpoint devices to check for suspicious file access, application usage, and system setting changes. The endpoint devices include all desktops, laptops, and servers in the IT infrastructure.

6. Databases

Splunk UBA can analyze and detect suspicious queries or data modifications in your databases that could indicate a potential security breach.

7. Email Systems

Insecure email systems can constitute potentially damaging data breaches where threat actors may illegally intercept or gain unauthorized access to your private business email communications. 

Splunk UBA can help you avoid such threats by analyzing email activity, including attachments, email content, and sender/receiver behavior. It allows you to proactively detect phishing attacks and other email-based threats, helping you quickly address potential security concerns and mitigate internal risks.

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In conclusion, If you are worried about the potential costs associated with revamping your IT infrastructure to facilitate Splunk UBA, don’t worry. Splunk UBA can easily integrate with your existing organizational infrastructure. 

Moreover, Splunk UBA works with various platforms and data sources, such as network devices, cloud applications, security devices, and on-premise systems. 

Get your data flowing to your Splunk UBA environment and watch Splunk UBA mitigate your internal threats while helping you maintain compliance with industry standards and other user data security and privacy regulatory requirements. 

If you still have doubts about implementing Splunk UBA, find a trusted security provider like BitsIO to ensure you effectively safeguard yourself from existing and emerging cyber threats.

Implement Splunk UBA with BitsIO

At BitsIO, we specialize in helping IT departments and partners of numerous industries, including Education, Financial Services, and Healthcare, implement advanced security solutions such as Splunk UBA. 

Our team of experienced security experts can help you design and deploy a customized Splunk UBA environment that meets your unique organizational needs. With our expertise in Splunk UBA implementation, we can help you get up and running quickly, so you can immediately benefit from this robust security solution. 

When implementing Splunk UBA, it’s essential to work with a certified partner like BitsIO to maximize its effect. 

Our primary goal for your Splunk implementation is to enable you to draw robust, actionable intelligence from your machine-generated data to enhance your decision-making to maximize your investment. 

Our end-to-end Splunk implementation service will guarantee that our Splunk experts will guide you through every step, from your initial consultation to the successful setup of a fully configured and secured Splunk environment.

In addition to Splunk, Bitsio offers a range of cybersecurity services, including vulnerability assessments, employee training, and incident response planning. By working with Bitsio, businesses can take a proactive approach to their cyber security and decrease the risk of cyber attacks. 

We provide a managed and cost-effective Splunk offering that can permanently rid you of the complexities and risks of a self-managed environment. Contact us to book your free assessment today.