Open source’s security scalability and flexibility

In order to stop sophisticated modern threats, organizations need to be flexible and scalable with the way they handle their data. Network flows and data need to be collected and examined at cloud scale in order to let defenders identify anomalous behavior, but getting to that stage is a heavy lift.

Henry Sowell, technical director for Hortonworks, spoke with CyberScoop on how open source systems allow for that flexibility and scalability, especially at a time where the onslaught of threats has never been greater.

“This is one of the major benefits of the open source – collaboration,” Sowell said. “If we don’t have the answer, we have the partners that do. This results in solutions that are more effective, more secure and are of a higher quality.”

Sowell says on top of keeping up with threats, open source systems also allow agencies to craft a first-rate way to share intelligence.

“You have large organizations that are working in the open source community that are developing really fantastic techniques, that are discovering things within the government that they need to be able to share,” he said. “It allows agencies to essentially create their own open-source environments within the government, so that they can say ‘I’ve developed new analytics that is allowing us to pick up threat actors that we haven’t done before’,” and start sharing that across a common platform.

You can listen to Sowell’s full thoughts in the podcast above.

This podcast is produced by CyberScoop and underwritten by Hortonworks.