Free Like a Puppy: Using Big Data Tools to Mine Security Data

Security hardware and software have a remarkable propensity to generate a great deal of log data while not necessarily having a very good user interface for mining that data. Big data tools are frequently open source and make querying unstructured data easier. What happened when Boston College tried to apply the free ELK stack to various security data sources? This session will covers the good, the bad, and the ugly of IT security's initial foray into the world of big data.

OUTCOMES: Visualize the types of data amenable to this approach * Learn how to set up an inexpensive, low-end, big data environment * Understand the limitations and time investment necessary to create that environment