The Use of SSL in Big Data Security Intelligence Career

Featured Image Caption: Career in Big Data Security Intelligence | Photo Credit: smartdatacollective

Companies and businesses across various sectors are increasingly relying on data to fuel innovation and deliver pioneering products and services. Ever since Big Data has come into the limelight, it has not only enabled companies to foster innovation but has also enriched the overall user experience significantly. Organizations all across the globe are diving into consumer and market data to understand the market trends, the buying patterns, and the preference patterns of the consumers to develop highly customized and cutting-edge products and services for the end consumer. However, as convenient as Big Data has made our lives, it has also rendered the global citizens to a threat that has stood the test of time as well as technology – cyber security breach.

Essentially, Big data accumulates, processes, and analyzes massive amounts of data from multiple and heterogeneous sources to uncover hidden trends and patterns that can be transformed into meaningful information to overcome various business challenges and scenarios. With this being the case, you never know what you’re exposing yourself to on the Internet. The risk of exposure is further escalated with the rapid adoption of cloud technology and interaction with consumers on social media platforms. Furthermore, today, cybercriminals are employing more advanced and sophisticated techniques of hacking like spear-phishing and social engineering. They have changed their approaches to effectively counter smart defense techniques. For instance, attackers either disguise malicious malware or activities within a vast amount of seemingly innocuous activities or they manage to skillfully hide the intent of an activity by making it appear as harmless.

In the light of this situation, one cannot merely focus on defending the organizational infrastructure against threats but also simultaneously find proactive methods to identify threats and mitigate them. To meet the ever-evolving security challenges, it has become imperative to develop high-end security solutions. And SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is an excellent option.

As of today, 34% of business applications use SSL for encrypting vital and sensitive business data. When it comes to e-commerce websites and businesses, online security is a top priority and a little carelessness here could spell a huge loss for business at the cost of the trust of your customers.

Why SSL?

SSL is a standard security protocol used for establishing encrypted links between a browser and a web server. There are three fundamental blocks that makeup SSL security infrastructure: encryption, valid certification, and authentication. The functioning of SSL technology is such that all the transaction of data takes place strictly between the web server and the browser, by encrypting the data, thereby making it indiscernible for everyone but the receiving server. Hence, SSL is highly recommended to combat the challenges intrinsic to the cloud infrastructure.

So, how exactly does SSL maintain the integrity of Big Data and cloud systems?

• Storing large volumes of Big Data in the cloud brings forth one particular challenge – where the data resides in the cloud. Apart from risks associated with data segregation, in cloud infrastructure, there always remains the issue of giving a certain degree of control over sensitive data to third-party providers. These issues can be effectively tackled with SSL. since SSL encrypts all the data that’s transmitted between a server and the cloud, you need not worry about the crucial and sensitive information being hacked or misused by anyone else.
• In an SSL security system, the identity of each participating device and verifies their identities so as to ensure that the data remains secure through all the stages of transmission.
• Organizations not only have to regulate and monitor the location and access features of the data, but they also have to abide by regulatory compliance norms when making the shift to a cloud platform. SSL authentication can prove to be highly beneficial here as it prevents the accidental leakage or disclosure of the sensitive data in adherence to the regulatory requirements.

Career In Big Data Security Intelligence

As mentioned earlier, the rapidly escalating reliance on Big Data has brought with it numerous possibilities of breach of privacy and hence, organizations (both big and small) are putting security concerns as the topmost priority. Corresponding to this, the demand for skilled professionals in cybersecurity and security intelligence is also increasing. The most in-demand cybersecurity and intelligence jobs include the roles of Security Managers, Security Analysts, Chief Information Security Officer, and Cyber Intelligence Analysts, to name a few. Although the demand for trained professionals in cybersecurity is at an all-time high, there’s a massive shortage for such professionals. According to the ISACA, by 2019, there will be a global shortage of nearly 2 million cyber security professionals.

What does this huge gap in demand and supply entail for the fields cyber security and Big Data intelligence?

It calls for an all-comprehensive training in Big Data security intelligence. Instead of focusing all their energies on hiring security, organizations should also invest in creating training individuals in Big Data security intelligence and SSL. To build a successful career in Big Data intelligence, one needs to have a solid foundation of the fundamentals of intelligence theory including intelligence lifecycle, intelligence analysis, and so on. These domains require a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Information Systems. Apart from this, you need to be well-versed in Big Data systems, network engineering, firewalls, security operations, and incident response technologies, and computer network intrusion detection/prevention systems. Now, coming to SSL, you should have a basic understanding of cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure.

If you are new to Big Data, it’s not an issue – there are many online platforms that offer excellent Big Data certification programs. These programs are specially designed to walk you through the fundamentals of Big Data, starting from the basic concepts and moving on to the more advanced ones.

By combining the power of SSL with Big Data intelligence we can come up with more robust and powerful security systems that can help both prevent, detect, and mitigate security challenges effectively.

By Abhinav Rai
who is a Data Analyst at UpGrad which is an online education platform providing industry oriented programs in collaboration with world-class institutes, some of which are MICA, IIIT Bangalore, BITS and various industry leaders which include MakeMyTrip, Ola, Flipkart etc.

Member since September, 2018
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