In charge of managing a complex data environment with rapidly evolving internal and external threats, Mike Denning, VP of global security for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, revealed that the Verizon security team needed to “capture all that data, aggregate it in real time and take action … that’s what lead us to Splunk.”

Knowing where your critical elements are

In an interview with John Furrier and George Gilbert, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at Splunk .conf 2015 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Denning said that about 18 months ago, Verizon made the move out of a compliance-driven approach to security to a risk-based approach. Denning described the risk-based approach to security as “knowing where your critical elements are, your landscape, the types of adversaries or organizations you’re facing.”

“Splunk is a very effective tool for learning and continuously monitoring machines and users that are acting out of patterns,” explained Denning, who gave the example of how information across multiple customers can be deployed into Splunk to rapidly identify and thwart attacks. “We see an attack move across verticals. If you see an attack across one bank, you’ll see it across multiple banks. This is where speed matters.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Splunk .conf 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE