European organisations recognise the benefits of machine data analytics for security

The research, conducted by 451 Research and commissioned by Sumo Logic, surveyed 250 executives across the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. This was also compared with data based on a previous survey of US respondents that were asked the same questions. The results show that companies in the U.S. are currently more likely to use and understand the value of machine data analytics than their European counterparts.

Key findings include:

• 64 percent of U.S. respondents said that machine data is extremely important to their company’s ability to meet its goals, while only 54 percent of European respondents said the same.
• When asked if machine data tools are deployed on-premises, only 48 percent of European correspondents responded affirmatively, compared to 74 percent of U.S. respondents.
• However, Europe leads the way in recognising the benefit of machine data analytics in security use cases, with 63 percent of European companies, ahead of the U.S. Other top use cases cited for machine data in Europe were monitoring (55 percent), business insight (48 percent), and troubleshooting (48 percent).

Docker adoption continues to expand rapidly in AWS

Looking at its own research, which is derived from active and anonymised data from more than 1,600 customers and 50,000 users, Sumo Logic found in its 2018 “State of Modern Applications and DevSecOps in the Cloud” report that Docker adoption has grown rapidly for companies deploying on AWS. In the past year, the number of companies running Docker containers on AWS has grown from 24 percent of respondents to 28 percent, according to the findings. This represents a year on year growth in companies running Docker containers on AWS of 16 percent. Both Docker Engine, which provides a standardized packaging format for diverse applications,and Docker Enterprise, an enterprise-ready container platform for managing and securing applications, are available on the AWS Marketplace. Additionally, the Sumo Logic Logging Plugin for Docker Enterprise is available for download on the Docker Store.

“The move to microservices and container-based architectures from Docker Enterprise makes it easier to deploy at scale, but it can also make it harder to effectively monitor activities over time without the right approach to logs and metrics in place,” said Colin Fernandes, director of EMEA  product marketing, Sumo Logic “Conversely, getting effective oversight across systems and users with machine data makes delivering better services easier alongside improving security and operations. It’s gratifying to see that European organisations already understand the value in using machine data analytics for security purposes.”

International gaming and casino operations company Paf has deployed its critical applications infrastructure on AWS as part of a move to modernise its IT. The deployment included using Sumo Logic to get detailed machine data analytics and insight into performance levels.

"We chose Sumo Logic to provide us with insight into our new application deployments, which are far more complex than our previous applications, and to support our move to container based deployments," said Lars-Goran Hakamo, Security Architect at Paf. “Sumo Logic gives us the ability to identify and resolve issues faster and keep those applications performing at scale. The rich visibility and data insights we are able to glean from Sumo Logic from across our container estate, across our applications and our AWS infrastructure is simply unbelievable.”

Business barriers to data deployments

The 451 Research report also provided insight into the barriers preventing wider usage of machine data analytics:

• Real-time access to data was most commonly cited (37 percent), while the management of analytics tools also prevented broader usage of machine data.
• 47 percent of respondents said that the adoption of modern technologies does make it harder to get the data they need for speedy decision-making.
• Fewer respondents in Europe felt their organisations had a software-centric mindset compared to the US audience. This described how much the organisations viewed their use and management of software as critical to their success.

“Europe is adopting modern tools and technologies at a slower rate than their U.S. counterparts, and fewer companies currently have that ‘software-led’ mindset in place. However, the desire for more continuous insights derived from machine data is there. What the data shows is that once European organisations start using machine data analytics to gain visibility into their security operations, they begin to see the value for other use cases across operations, development and the business,” said Fernandes. “It’s our goal to democratise machine data and make it easier to deploy this as part of modern application deployments running on on the Docker Enterprise container platform.”