From: Computing.co.uk
By Danny Palmer
Barclays’ adoption of Splunk data insight and intelligence tools has prevented the bank from being fined for anti-compliance or worse, barred from doing business.
That is according to Stephen Gailey, group head of security services for Barclays, who made the comments during a presentation at Splunk’s “Splunk Live” conference in the City of London.
He explained how a previous poor Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system prevented Barclays from being able to properly extract and use data.
“The question I really used to hate was when someone came into my office and asked ‘what is your data retention policy?’ and I’d shout ‘it doesn’t matter, I can’t get it out!’,” Gailey said.
He then went on to explain that his original planned solution for the problem had been multiple SIEMs and multiple management centres.
“It wasn’t my finest hour,” he admitted, before describing the costs of such a set up as “hideous”, both when it came to acquiring it and the cost of ownership.
Gailey told the conference that since adopting Splunk “all that nasty SIEM stuff is gone”, with Splunk distributed around 12 global data centres, across 60 servers with a further 20 due for commissioning in the near future. Barclays has not fallen foul of data regulations because of its use of Splunk, he explained.
“We wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t getting value out of it, and we’re being driven by our compliance, regulators and risk teams. It’s keeping us from being fined,” Gailey said. “Without Splunk we might be taken out of the market; we might be fined or stopped from trading altogether.”
According to Gailey, despite the benefits it has already brought, Barclays is only just starting to scratch the surface of what it can do with Splunk, arguing there are more benefits to be had in future.
“For us it’s all about the value we get,” he said.
Gailey’s comments about value echo those of WorldPay’s Darren Dance, who earlier in the day also praised Splunk for its ability to allow the firm to gain more value from data.
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