Welcome Guest. | Log In | Register | Membership Benefits


Topics:   Database Security Tech Center : Security Views

DAM Market Observation

Despite talk about the lack of innovation in the data security market, excellent technologies like DAM and DLP have been available for years before customers embraced them

Feb 28, 2011 | 10:44 AM | 

By Adrian Lane
Dark Reading

A thought hit me this week that is worth mentioning in regard to database security. This is the first time in my 10 years working with database activity monitoring (DAM) technologies that it was the principal driver in several proof-of-concept engagements. The RSA Security Conference for 2011 concluded last week, during which I heard from multiple vendors and customers that DAM was the specified technology need, fulfilling the bulk of the requirements.

I have been working with DAM technology since 2000, writing my own ad-hoc tools to do basic misuse detection. That was a couple of years before there even was a DAM market. At the time it was considered a strange offshoot of intrusion detection systems. Even in 2002, when a handful of vendors popped on the scene, sales were few and far between.

Now the DAM market is well more than $100 million and growing, but this is the first time I have seen DAM repeatedly the buyer's focus. Sales were not because SIEM customers needed better application layer detection. Not because customers wanted a detective control to complement a vulnerability assessment product. Not because they wanted to buttress their Web application firewall product for better protection against SQL Injection. Not because it helped performance and operations management task. These customers had specific data and database security challenges that were only addressed with DAM.

I think this is newsworthy for a very specific reason: It has taken a decade before mainstream IT has embraced database monitoring. There is a lot of talk about the lack of innovation in the data security market. However, there have been excellent technologies, like DAM and DLP, available for years, but it has taken the better part of the past decade before customers were even aware of these technologies and understood the benefits to data security. Compliance, database security, and database operations management all benefit. The platforms are fully mature. Firms like IBM, Fortinet, and Oracle jumped in with both feet, making investments in Guardium, IPLocks, and Secerno, respectively. Maybe it has taken those big firms to get the word out, or maybe it has taken a while for IT to understand perimeter and network security tools are not solving security problems. But it does look like Joel Spolsky was right: it takes ten years.

Either way, focusing more at the data layer is a good thing.

Adrian Lane is an analyst/CTO with Securosis LLC, an independent security consulting practice. Special to Dark Reading.



Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Dark Reading encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Dark Reading moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Dark Reading further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS



Database Security Reports

report Securing The Data Warehouse
Many enterprises are building data warehouses to centralize the ever-increasing information flowing through their organizations into useful repositories. This makes good business sense, but it opens up a slew of concerns from a security standpoint. IT professionals can apply many of the same security best practices used with databases, but there are new lessons to be learned as well.

report Defend Your Data From Malicious Insiders
The biggest threat to your company?s most sensitive data may be the employee who has legitimate access to corporate databases but less-than-legitimate intentions. And while the incidence of insider data breaches has decreased, external attacks often imitate them--and do serious damage. Follow our advice to mitigate the risk.

report Ensuring Secure Database Access
Role-based access control based on least user privilege is one of the most effective ways to prevent the compromise of corporate data. But proper provisioning is a growing challenging, due to the proliferation of "big data," NoSQLdatabases, and cloud-based data storage.

Other reports from the Database Security Tech Center:

Related Content

Establishing a Strategy for Database Security is No Longer Optional
As databases continue to grow in size, complexity and importance, enterprises struggle to identify the most appropriate controls regarding their use and misuse. The report identifies best practices, including: Implementing database activity monitoring to mitigate the high levels of risk from database vulnerabilities, and address audit findings in areas such as database segregation of duties and change management; using data security measures, such as data masking and data encryption; and monitoring privileged-user access and access to critical data.

Database Activity Monitoring Is Evolving Into Database Audit and Protection
In this report, Gartner writes that "Database audit and protection (DAP) represents an evolutionary advance in database activity monitoring tools." DAP suites provide comprehensive, cross-platform support in heterogeneous database environments to protect sensitive data from inappropriate use. Organizations are increasingly concerned with optimizing database security and mitigating risks associated with database vulnerabilities.

Protecting Against Database Attacks and Insider Threats: Top 5 Scenarios
Data security presents a multi-dimensional challenge in today's complex IT environment. Multiple access paths and permission levels have resulted in a broad array of security threats and vulnerabilities. We invite you to read this new eBook: "Protecting against database attacks and insider threats" to learn the top five scenarios and essential best practices for preventing database attacks and insider threats.

Demo: Distributed Database Security with Real-time Monitoring and Audit Protection
Organizations across the globe continue to experience compromised data caused by malicious attacks, web application vulnerabilities or unauthorized changes. View this demo and learn how IBM InfoSphere Guardium? database activity monitoring can help protect your sensitive data in distributed DBMS environments with a holistic approach to data security and compliance.

Look Beyond Native Database Auditing To Improve Security, Audit Visibility, And Real-Time Protection
Today's attacks on enterprise databases are more sophisticated than ever, and they occur so fast that it's often difficult to stop them in real time. Despite significant efforts to protect enterprise databases, the number of records breached has grown each year - due to all types of internal and external attacks and violations of corporate policy.




Featured Webcasts
Featured Whitepapers
Featured Reports