RSA Builds On Big Data Security Strategy With Silver Tail Acquisition

Storage giant EMC has announced the acquisition of intelligence and behavioural analysis firm Silver Tail Systems, which will be folded into its security arm RSA once the deal is finalised.

The move will bolster RSA’s pledge to focus on Big Data and intelligence-led security.

Silver Tail does what is known as web session intelligence, drawing on various points of data, from the sessions themselves to what is happening across an enterprise, to determine where anomalies occur or there is a genuine threat to the business. It predominantly focuses on feeding “deep visibility into mobile application traffic” back to IT security teams.

EMC said it expected the deal to close in the fourth quarter of 2012, but the terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

RSA and its Big Data Art

At the RSA 2012 conference in London earlier this year, Art Coviello, RSA executive chairman, told TechWeekEurope the company would be pursuing its Big Data-driven strategy, providing customers with enough intelligence to protect from modern-day threats. He promised major product announcements would arrive towards the end of the year and through the start of 2013.

“The industry is well beyond the point of providing effective security using static, perimeter point tools that fail to keep up with dynamic cyber attackers. Customers need better intelligence, analytics, and the ability to respond in real time which is a capability that Silver Tail’s products do extraordinarily well to help foil web-based attacks,” Coviello said.

“The recent attacks on the North American banking infrastructure are stark reminders of the pace of innovation in the cybercriminal ecosystem, the convergence of the fraud and info-security attack techniques and the profound responsibility of the CISO to help defend against these attacks,” added Tim Eades, CEO of Silver Tail.

“Silver Tail pioneered an approach that uses web session intelligence to provide unmatched visibility and the behavioral analysis that detects these threats and protects web-based platforms around the world.”

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