{"id":947,"date":"2015-03-31T09:42:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T16:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/industry\/blog\/uncategorized\/smart-alerting-shelter-from-the-data-storm\/"},"modified":"2023-07-07T11:09:41","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T18:09:41","slug":"smart-alerting-shelter-from-the-data-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/government\/2015\/03\/31\/smart-alerting-shelter-from-the-data-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart alerting: shelter from the data storm?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Here\u2019s a fundamental paradox of today\u2019s massively connected IT systems: the more information available to you, the less you want. No one likes getting buried in piles of irrelevant transaction data, fire-hosed with emergency alerts or overloaded with pictures of cats, cakes and kids on social media. There\u2019s only so much data any one person, or enterprise, can take.<\/p>\n

Consider the notorious Target data breech, for example. According to a lengthy Bloomberg Business article<\/a>, two of Target\u2019s security monitoring systems (provided by FireEye and Symantec, respectively) detected the malware that ultimately led to a pirate server operating inside company firewalls. Each service immediately sent out a series of urgent alerts (\u201cmalware.binary!\u201d). Yet for some reason, the humans receiving these alerts, those in charge of Target\u2019s IT systems, took no action. The result: over 100 million<\/a> stolen credit cards, hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and the resignation of a CEO.<\/p>\n

The problem was not that the Target IT staff was incompetent. After all, for years they had operated one of the largest and most successful retail IT environments in the world. The problem was that they were swamped. The IT departments of most global-brand companies receive hundreds to thousands of intrusion detection alerts every day. They also receive a deluge of reports, charts and alerts about the state of their internal network, and never-ending notifications about new environmental cyber threats. An information haystack was continuously being dumped on the Target staff, and somehow they failed to find the needle.<\/p>\n

Target is hardly the only company with a \u201chaystack and needle\u201d when processing alerts. With the continuing rise of Social Media, Big Data, Smart Cities, the Internet of Things, et al., data streams are only going to get bigger, faster and denser. And not just for IT department cyber monitoring experts, but for everyone.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s hyper-linked global Internet produces a tremendous amount of junk, or data chaff. As massively connected sensors, machines, processes and people begin piling up ever more chaff<\/i>, services that deliver just wheat become critical.<\/p>\n

One technology whose mission is \u201cjust wheat\u201d delivery-especially when it comes to critical, real-time alert notifications-is Smart Alerting. It\u2019s used in security, intelligence and emergency response circles today, but holds considerable promise, even in the near term, for helping Smart Cities, global enterprises and consumers find shelter from the growing data storm.<\/p>\n

Most Smart Alerting services had their origins a decade ago in U.S. military, homeland security and intelligence community circles. They are now also used widely in the large enterprise sector around the world. Smart Alerting companies have yet to perfect the process of delivering precisely correct, actionable information-and only that information-to the right people, when they need it most…<\/i>but they are getting better at it all the time.<\/p>\n

A true Smart Alerting story: Within sixty minutes of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, foreign expats in Japan, working for over a dozen of large global companies, begin receiving real-time alerts about the fast-breaking events there, on their PCs, tablets and phones. From this new ad-hoc service, expats got expert real-time advice about what to do. This service was provided by one of the world\u2019s largest physical security vendors to its best customers, and it delivered alert payloads that included evacuation routes, real-time radiation plume maps and a variety of other critical information. The alert recipients in Japan were most grateful.<\/p>\n

Smart Alerting has its own global emergency alert data structure standard, and a variety of features developed for the specific requirements of smart emergency alert notification. Here\u2019s how it works:<\/p>\n