Intelligence Start-Up Goes Behind Enemy Lines to Get Ahead of Hackers - The New York Times

Big -- and expensive -- security data

"The average organization receives 16,937 alerts a week. Only 19 percent of them are deemed “reliable,” and only 4 percent are investigated, according to a study released in January by the Ponemon Institute, which tracks data breaches. By the time criminals make enough noise to merit a full investigation, it can take financial services companies more than three months, on average, to discover them, and retailers more than six months.

“Just generating more alerts is wasting billions of dollars of venture capital,” said David Cowan, an iSight investor and a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. The last thing an executive in charge of network security needs is more alerts, he said: “They don’t have time. They need human, actionable threat intelligence.”"

Intelligence Start-Up Goes Behind Enemy Lines to Get Ahead of Hackers - The New York Times