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au Kabucom Securities Brings Dark Data Into the Light to Battle Cyberattacks
Part of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), au Kabucom Securities offers online brokerage services to more than 1.1 million customers across Japan.
To achieve its goal to automate DevSecOps, the company needed a way to guard against potentially devastating cybersecurity threats while cost-effectively visualizing and analyzing all its data — including dark data, the unused, unknown and untapped data across the organization. Since turning to the Splunk platform, au Kabucom Securities has:
- Gained full visibility into its data on a unified analytics platform
- Improved overall efficiency through an agile, automated DevSecOps framework
- Enhanced cybersecurity readiness with a small team of two to three people
Challenges
- Lacked effective log management and analysis, which made it difficult to identify emerging anomalies
- Lacked data visualization and actionable insights necessary for successful DevSecOps automation
- Had insufficient manpower to combat threats and ensure cybersecurity readiness
Business Impact
- Gained data visibility and improved incident investigation through a scalable analytics platform
- Heightened cybersecurity by automating DevSecOps
- Simplified and enhanced operation by automating laborious manual processes
Uncovering the Value of Untapped Data
Massive in scale and difficult to monitor without the right tools, machine-generated log data can quickly become overwhelming — and expensive. “In the early days, we engaged a managed SIEM service,” says Yoichi Ishikawa, assistant executive to general managing officer of system, system development department and deputy general manager, IT strategy group at au Kabucom Securities. “As log data increased, our costs surged exponentially. Worse still, we couldn’t see our log data firsthand. Since data was outsourced for analysis, we only received notifications for identified anomalies. We needed a more proactive approach.”
Security was another top priority for the organization. “Although we have a cybersecurity task force to monitor risks, a DDoS outbreak in 2017 revealed the need for stronger defense and greater information transparency across the company,” says Ishikawa. “Before we could embrace DevSecOps by incorporating security into development and operation, we had to first analyze the dark data that we’d been generating, but not properly leveraging.”
To harness the value of all its data while bolstering security, au Kabucom Securities turned to the Splunk platform.
