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Turning data into answers
Industry view: Legacy IT can be harnessed to provide real time data that strengthens security and opens the door for advanced analytics, says Ben Emslie, head of public sector UK at Splunk
Across the public sector organisations are increasingly realising the value of real time data in improving resilience and operations in areas such as facilities management, staff deployment, and especially in cyber security.
Data can help them to identify risks and threats in advance, take precautionary steps, and enable them to take action immediatelyt an incident occurs. Machine learning can then add a sophisticated extra capability, drawing on past incidents to speed up identification of risks and immediately provide recommendations on the best course of remedial action.
But many organisations across local and central government, police, fire and health remain heavily dependent on legacy systems, in which the data is scattered across the IT estate and difficult to pull together. And with ongoing financial pressures there is often little scope for major investments in integrating or upgrading these systems.
Order from chaos
This is where organisations can benefit from Splunk, a technology layer that sits above and beyond legacy and operational systems. It can harness and integrate these disparate data streams to not just closely monitor cyber security and IT operations but also provide a platform for advanced data science across the organisation.
Splunk has developed a capability for this approach with its family of software products that draw on machine data – from applications, infrastructure, security software and the internet of things – to provide a concise flow of real time information and insights that enable an organisation to raise its game in IT security and beyond.
The potential of this can be seen for example in the NHS, in cyber monitoring not just of IT systems and equipment but also medical devices. This is becoming increasingly important as the health service makes increasing use of internet connected devices to monitor the health of patients and the use of its assets. If these are compromised by external actors it can cause massive problems, and NHS bodies need a clear, real time view of any potential problems, and the insights to react quickly to prevent them escalating.
This is where the machine learning element can provide invaluable assistance, quickly detecting patterns and relationships to previous incidents, and quickly providing the insights and advice to support a quick response.
The security capability of the offering was highlighted earlier this year when the team from NHS Digital’s Delivery Centre won Splunk’s public sector ‘Boss of the Security Operations Centre’ award. Its experience of working with Splunk enabled it to beat other public sector organisations in responding to scenarios of real security incidents and testing their knowledge of data security and the software.
Andrew Meyer, programme director of NHS Digital's Digital Delivery Centre, said: "Every day sees our teams in the centre challenged, working across different platforms for a wide range of national projects. Data security is one of the most important and so it is great to see our staff doing so well in an event like this.”
Wider use
Organisations in other public services, including most central government departments, have also made use of Splunk’s technology for systems, applications and network monitoring.
Air Cdre Chris Moore, ISS director service operations, UK Ministry of Defence, says that “The Splunk platform provides the Ministry of Defence access to real-time protective and network performance monitoring as part of our ‘Enterprise Security & Service Management’ program. We are more able to centrally monitor performance of our fixed and mobile networks. In the months since rolling out Splunk, we have identified potential broader use cases where UK Ministry of Defence could benefit from advanced data analytics in the future.”
Whilst this security enhancing service is invaluable, it is just the beginning. The data collected on the Splunk platform can be exploited to provide insights on operational issues, user behaviour and business processes. It enables organisations to take their data and ask different questions to gain new insights.
It is not meant as a replacement for a business intelligence capability – it provides service rather than strategic intelligence – but it can run alongside it to provide a more efficient monitoring of services and platform for analytics. This provides an invaluable resource for public authorities that can help them to squeeze extra value out of their legacy systems and achieve new levels of internal efficiency.
In the case of the NHS, this can contribute to an improvement in system efficiency, better use of its assets and a better service for patients. It can feed into the development of new treatments and patient pathways, it can monitor and support people in their homes through IoT devices; and it can contribute to more effective procurement and long term cost-effectiveness.
Similar benefits are obtainable for other parts of the public sector, including local government, the police and higher education. The technology draws on the data within legacy and new systems to provide answers along with actionable intelligence from limited resources.
The increasing demand to draw the benefits from a rapidly expanding stream of data, and to do so in real time, makes this a priority for many public sector organisations. The time has come to investigate more closely how to turn your data into answers.
Interested in learning how Splunk can give you answers? SplunkLive! in London on 28th June is your opportunity to hear directly from Splunk and Customer experts, and interact with their key partners. Learn how you can tap into the value of your machine data to get the answers you need. Find out more about SplunkLive! and register here
You can also download Splunk's latest e-book Data Secrets Revealed – A Collection of EMEA Customer Stories
