Cray, Deloitte to offer cyber threat analytics solution

American supercomputer manufacturer, Cray has partnered with Deloitte’s Advisory Cyber Risk Services to introduce Cyber Reconnaissance and Analytics for threat analysis in a business network. Available as a subscription-based offering, the analytics suite aims at helping organizations, combat cyber-attacks and defend unauthorized cyber penetrations. It claims to provide detailed, actionable information on potential threat vectors, create risk profiles and identify specific flows, network locations, times and events. Deborah Golden, Leader and Principal, federal cyber risk services, Deloitte Advisory and Touche LLP, said:

Instead of reviewing every component of an agency’s internal enterprise, we are trying to show what the adversary sees in order to give an organization a true ‘risk profile.’ This includes the ability to effectively prioritize internal budgets and resources, and facilitate a realistic approach toward assessing network defense effectiveness.

The Cyber Reconnaissance and Analytics service is powered by Cray’s new agile analytics platform, Urika- GX system, that combines its supercomputing technology and speed with an open, enterprise-ready software framework for big data analytics. Reportedly, the system also enables the customers to run multiple analytics workloads concurrently on a single platform. Barry Bolding, Chief Strategy Officer, Cray, said:

Defending against sophisticated and evolving threats is an analytics problem squarely at the crossroads of big data and supercomputing. This combination of Cray’s analytics platform and Deloitte Advisory’s threat risk management service is a formidable solution in the war on cyber-threats. Additionally, for the first time, customers can now utilize the power and capabilities of a Cray solution as-a-service.

According to Cray, the joint offering is designed to equalize the playing field by providing agencies with a clear picture of its cyber landscape from the adversary’s perspective. It claims to open the eyes to weaknesses, vulnerabilities, openings, activity, and nodes that contain risks and anomalous activity. Gordon Hannah, leader and principal, cyber reconnaissance and analytics, Deloitte Advisory cyber risk services and Touche LLP, said:

Teaming with Cray was a clear choice and allows for versatility combined with speed to tackle big data problems. Cyber analytics is about leveraging efficiencies and joining bits of knowledge together. With Cyber Reconnaissance, we utilize graph analytics to identify relationships and look for behavioral patterns versus querying for a known signature. Few solutions available today give customers the ability to have such high frequency insights.