The motto for today’s cybersecurity teams should be “Blink, and you’ll miss it.” A robust defense requires analyzing the immense volume of data pouring into organizations — sometimes as much as tens of terabytes (TB) per day. Moreover, stopping threats from sliding underneath the radar requires exceptional speed. Traditional security information and event management (SIEM) solutions were not designed to handle such massive datasets. Their inability to keep pace leaves organizations vulnerable and unprotected.

Cybersecurity operations, which rely on rapid identification of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) like suspicious IP addresses, URLs, or file hashes, need a faster way to sift through massive datasets. To accommodate this volume of data, Anomali is introducing Anomali Turbo Search,” - a new feature that accelerates Anomali’s industry-leading search by 1,000 times, empowering analysts to identify indicators of compromise (IoCs) like suspicious IP addresses, URLs, or file hashes faster than ever before.

The Challenge of Big Data in Cybersecurity

Security teams are overwhelmed by data. Whether they ingest 50 TB of logs every day, like some of Anomali’s larger customers, or contend with a constant flow of alerts and potential threats, the deluge requires breakneck speed and impeccable efficiency. Traditional search methods often buckle under the strain, with dashboards timing out or slow-loading panels creating operational bottlenecks.

Compounding the challenge, analysts frequently need to search against historical data. For instance, a typical search might involve filtering through logs over a 90-day window for IP addresses, subnets, URLs, or file hashes that may have triggered suspicious activity. Complex, multi-faceted queries impose a significant load on the system and slow down search results, delaying threat detection and creating the potential for disastrous consequences.

The Power of Speed: Turbo Search’s Operational Benefits

Anomali’s Turbo Search allows searches to run up to 1,000 times faster than before. It transforms queries that previously took minutes to complete (which is still very fast, particularly compared to our peers), and can now return results in less than a second (not a typo).  

This unprecedented search speed will impact cybersecurity operations in the following five ways:  

1. Faster Threat Detection and Response

Faster search means faster threat detection and mitigation. Whether an IoC is an IP address linked to a malicious server or a URL associated with a phishing attack, reducing the time it takes to find these elements drastically pares down response time, potentially preventing a breach before it escalates.

This high-velocity search lets analysts swiftly navigate through historical data — up to 90 or more days’ worth of logs — and pinpoint key IoCs without waiting for sluggish search results to load. It also accelerates correlating data across various sources, enabling a more comprehensive and accurate analysis.

2. Increased Analyst Efficiency

Turbo Search makes security teams more productive. Instead of waiting for queries to run or dealing with system timeouts, analysts can spend more time doing what they do best: investigating and neutralizing threats. A dashboard that operates in real time or near real time allows analysts to focus on decision-making rather than managing the limitations of their tools.

The accelerated search speed combats the inefficiency caused by constantly triggering new search requests. It also improves the concurrent search experience through a more nuanced approach to queries, making the process fast enough to appear instantaneously.

3. Another Evolution in Scalability

Cybersecurity operations must be able to handle growing data volumes without degrading speed or performance. Turbo Search, with its ability to handle massive datasets without slowing down, provides effortless scale.

Scalability is especially crucial for large organizations with large security, IT, and network administration teams. For example, one of Anomali’s customers has 20 analysts relying on its Security and IT Operations Platform for their investigations. Without Turbo Search, the system would likely take minutes to return results as they simultaneously queried petabytes of data. Turbo Search takes just seconds, ensuring that even the largest teams can work efficiently.

4. Operational Efficiency in Managing High Data Volume

With 50 TB of daily data ingest, every query, filter, and search term adds complexity to the system. Customers running searches in legacy SIEM systems would result in delays as the system struggled against the overwhelming volume.  

While Anomali’s  architecture has been optimized to handle these large data ingest loads Anomali’s newly refined algorithmic framework, Turbo Search, provides a more focused approach, reducing the load on the system and further. Where Anomali was 100s of times faster than legacy SIEMs before it is now 100,000s times faster even in the face of growing volume of event, threat actors and threat data. It easily handles vast data volumes by streamlining workflows and focusing on high-priority search terms.    

5. Improved Dashboard Usability

Dashboards are the heartbeat of any Security Operations Center (SOC), providing analysts with real-time insights into ongoing threats and incidents. The ability to quickly filter through massive datasets and generate relevant results in real time is crucial for maintaining situational awareness. Turbo Search brings a new level of responsiveness to Anomali’s dashboards, updating them almost instantaneously.

Previously, analysts using dashboards would experience delays or timeouts due to the sheer volume of data being ingested. Thanks to Turbo Search, these dashboards can support much faster and more efficient data retrieval, even when filtering against 50 TB of daily logs with a 90+ day lookback.

Strategic Benefits: Keeping Pace with Evolving Threats

Cybersecurity is not just about the here and now; it’s about anticipating what’s coming. Threat actors are constantly evolving, and organizations need tools that help them keep up. Turbo Search’s enhanced speed enables analysts to rapidly detect and respond to emerging threats in near real time, which is vital when facing adversaries who are intent on staying a step ahead.

Turbo search also ensures that even complex searches — those involving multiple data types, such as IP addresses, hashes, or URLs — can be executed efficiently. By focusing on rote but critical search terms to narrow down search results, the system ensures that it remains efficient and effective, even as data volumes expands and complexity increases.

Supercharge Your SOC

The operational benefits of such a strong acceleration in search speed cannot be overstated. From faster threat detection and response to improved scalability and dashboard functionality, Turbo Search empowers security teams to act more quickly and efficiently in the face of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.  

Turbo Search ensures organizations can keep up with the demands of modern cybersecurity operations while staying ahead of threats, even while contending with exponentially increasing data volumes. In a world where every second counts, speed isn’t just a convenience — it’s a necessity. Schedule a demo today to see Turbo Search in action for yourself.

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