Why Data Science And Security Teams Need To Be Aligned For Proactive Security Planning

The number of data breaches rose by over 15% in the last year. The success of your business and the trust of your stakeholders is contingent upon your ability to keep your data safe as we see a spike in data breaches.

If you’re looking to improve your security strategy, and take a more proactive approach to potential security threats, keep reading. This guide will explain the benefits that data science can offer your physical security strategy.

What Is Data Science, And Why Is It Relevant To Security?

By now, we know that cybersecurity and physical security go hand in hand. But, did you know that data science is also a powerful tool for your physical security strategy? Cybersecurity professionals are instrumental in gatekeeping your security data and network.

Data science professionals analyze your security data to draw conclusions and come up with recommendations for the best response. Your physical security team could benefit from these recommendations and could gain a fuller understanding of their security data with the help of a data analytics team.

Why Data Science And Security Teams Need To Align

In the wake of the cloud-based revolution, it’s no surprise that physical security teams need to align themselves with data science teams. Here, we will discuss some of the major benefits companies gain from combining security and data science teams.

A More Data-Driven Approach

Your data science team should have access to your security data. Your physical security team will not be adept at spotting trends and anomalies in security data. In contrast, your data science team will be able to spot these trends easily and notify your physical security team.

Your data science team can implement AI and analytics to automate data analysis from your access control and video surveillance systems. When the analytics detect a potential security threat, this will trigger an automated alert, allowing your security team to act decisively and swiftly.

By merging data science and physical security, you can adapt your existing business security system and enhance its function, allowing you to prevent security events from occurring. If a breach is about to happen, your system will detect it instantly, and neither your data science team nor physical security team will have to monitor security data to detect a breach consistently.

More Data Accuracy

If you’re using data to provide insight into potential security breaches, you need to know which anomalies are indicative of a breach and which aren’t. You can provide your physical security team with more data accuracy. Your data science team can provide quality assurance on security data to avoid false flags.

Data quality assurance identifies and eliminates data anomalies in data profiling and cleansing. When your physical security team works with more accurate data, this will lead to improved security operations.

DevSecOps Feedback Loops

DevSecOps is an abbreviation for the combined efforts of a business’s development, security, and operations. DevSecOps focuses on automating security processes and developing new software to improve daily operations. Some of the primary duties in DevSecOps include:

• Searching repositories for security vulnerabilities – your data storage should not contain any flaws or weaknesses that could lead to a security breach in the future. Your DevSecOps strategy is responsible for searching for these vulnerabilities and developing strategies to eliminate them.
• Early threat modeling – your data science team can perform early threat modeling to help you strengthen your security strategy. Threat modeling is where you develop strategies to identify vulnerabilities and objectives.
• Security design reviews
• Static code analysis.
• Security code reviews.

You can also use a DevSecOps feedback loop to ensure security teams can act quickly. Feedback loops help to establish priorities for certain tasks and enforce project goals so that your security team knows which incidents are a priority, and how they should handle them. Automating this process allows your team to respond more efficiently to high-priority tasks.

Improved Communication And Collaboration

Cloud-based security technologies are making it more difficult for security teams to determine whether a breach falls under a cyber or physical security domain. The best way to avoid confusion and clarify which team is responsible for each breach is to merge teams. By integrating physical security and data science in your business, you can ensure that all security threat response protocols consider both the physical and digital aspects of security using the most accurate data. Merging both teams could also reduce the workload of each team, allowing you to streamline your workforce and make the most of your resources.

Summary

Hopefully, this guide has given you a basic understanding of data science, and why it might be beneficial to merge your data science and physical security teams. The security sphere is changing, and you need to have a fuller understanding of your security data to take a proactive approach to physical and cyber security.