IBM has taken the wraps off the first product to emerge from its acquisition of security information and event management (SIEM) vendor Q1 Labs, promising a new product that will draw security from hundreds of sources.
The QRadar Security Intelligence Platform, designed primarily by Q1 Labs, pulls together threat information from 400 different sources. IBM says it will help organisations that have a security infrastructure which spans many different products from many different vendors.
Significantly one of the sources QRadar will connect to is IBM’s existing X-Force threat feed, which Big Blue says monitors 13 billion security events per day in real-time.
Other new features of the QRadar Security Intelligence Platform include control of worker access to information. IBM Security Identity Manager and IBM Security Access Manager will be used to "determine whether access patterns exhibited by a given user are consistent with the user’s role and permissions within the organisation," IBM said in a statement.
IBM has also integrated Guardium Database Security – acquired in 2009 for $220m – to improve security monitoring at the database layer, the company said.
Big Blue has also tapped into another current hot topic: consumerisation of IT. By integrating IBM Endpoint Manager, the company aims to improve security for end-points such as smartphones, tablets and laptops as well as servers and desktop PCs. IBM Security AppScan has also been added, to improve monitoring of unpatched applications.
Q1 Labs was acquired by IBM back in October last year and was installed as the centre piece of a new-look security division at Big Blue. Called IBM Security Systems it aims to integrate traditional security offerings with IBM’s analytics platform to correlate security information from across the enterprise.
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IBM believes the number of threats organisations face everyday mean that this is the most sensible way to approach security.
"Trying to approach security with a piece-part approach simply doesn’t work," said Brendan Hannigan, general manager, IBM Security Systems. Hannigan was previously CEO at Q1 Labs.
"By applying analytics and knowledge of the latest threats and helping integrate key security elements, IBM plans to deliver predictive insight and broader protection," he added.
