Big Lessons in Small Data

Big data has been the recent buzz in security circles, but what are organizations missing by overlooking the power of "small data?" Verizon's Jay Jacobs discusses how to get the most from data analytics.

Jacobs, a data scientist at Verizon, discussed this topic in a presentation at RSA Conference Asia Pacific & Japan. His premise: In the rush to embrace big data, organizations have forgotten about methods of data analysis using small data. And, frankly, he contends, organizations still have a lot to learn from small data in particular and data analytics in general.

"The main challenge is that when people think of security data, they think that people with security experience can understand that data, and that's just not the case," Jacobs says. "Working with data [requires] its own language. Trying to pull out the meaning and learning from data takes a different skill than security."

In this interview, Jacobs discusses:

• The state of security data analysis;
• What's most misunderstood about big and small data;
• His book, Data-Driven Security: Analysis, Visualization and Dashboards.

Jacobs has over 15 years of experience within IT and information security with a focus on cryptography, risk, and data analysis. Jay is also the co-author of "Data Driven Security" a book covering data analysis and visualizations for information security. Jay is a Data Scientist at Verizon and a co-author on their annual Data Breach Investigation Report.

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