Understanding what is user behavior analytics will help you make the customer experience your core differentiator.

User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), also known as user behavior analytics (UBA), is the process of gathering insight into the network events that users generate every day.

It’s also important to note that user behavior is not marketing behavior—what you analyze in website analytics tools such as Read on to learn more about UBA and Google Analytics.

What is User Behavior Analytics (UBA)?

User behavior analytics (UBA) is the tracking, collecting and assessing of user data and activities using monitoring systems. UBA is increasingly referred to as user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) to reflect that user is just one category of entities with observable behaviors on modern networks. Other entities can include processes, applications and network devices.

UBA technologies analyze historical data logs — including network and authentication logs collected and stored in log management and security information and event management (Systems for Information and Event Management (SIEM) — to detect traffic patterns brought on by both innocent and dishonest user behavior. When the systems notice unusual behavior, UBA and UEBA systems are primarily designed to give cybersecurity teams actionable insights.

While UBA systems don’t take action based on their findings, they can be configured to automatically adjust the difficulty of authenticating user accounts that show anomalous behavior or otherwise deviate from normal behavior.

Also Read: What Is A User Community?

A Short History of User Behavior Analytics

User Behavior Analytics, an offshoot of The term “behavior analytics” refers to a concept that first emerged in the field of marketing, where tools like Google Analytics offered organized reports of server activity logs that gave marketers a better understanding of what visitors were doing on their websites.

Marketers can optimize for maximum conversion rates, which are correlated with higher revenues, with granular insight into user interactions.

The need for the same information is now growing across all organizational departments, especially in security, but also in human resources, sales, and any other process-driven areas.

Organizations use data from UBA systems to improve employee engagement, to better understand suspicious behavior, and of course to understand and analyze potential threats.

How Does User Behavior Analytics Help Organizations?

Identify Insider Threats

Every year, there are more data breaches, and 1 out of 5 of those breaches are caused by someone who already has access to the sensitive information of the company. A flash drive, which is incredibly small, has the potential to be used maliciously by the user.

Due to this, it is crucial that you can recognize potential risks before they materialize and that you take action to safeguard your valuable assets.

User behavior analytics software can assist organizations in identifying users who are accessing sensitive data as well as identifying those employees who exhibit risky behavior.

User Behavior Analytics leverages machine learning, algorithms and statistics to create and present a baseline behavior pattern or profile. Any actions that seem unusual for that profile will flag the system and alert the administrator to the issue.

Detect and Investigate Breach of Security

Sometimes a security breach cannot be prevented, no matter where it originated. Your chances of identifying the weaknesses are greatly improved by using user behavior analytics.

If the breach was internal, you could pinpoint the precise second that a user inserted a USB or visited a website or document that contained malware. If the attack originated from outside your organization, you could track and understand the unauthorized user’s movements throughout your organization’s network, files, and devices.

Optimize and Scale Business Processes

Having User Behavior Analytics in place makes your organization more transparent, as every action is documented. You can learn which processes are efficient and which ones are costing you money and labor by combining this data with your existing Business Intelligence information.

Business Process Mining is a practice that is made possible by software that analyzes user behavior. In this process, each job in the organization is audited to see how it is carried out. The results are then analyzed, and a new method based on data is tested. Software for Analyzing User Behavior.

Additional Visibility for Policy Compliance

Unusual conduct probably contravenes your company’s rules. Although monitoring employees for policy compliance is more often associated with employee monitoring and is not a primary function of UBA systems, tactical notifications of unexpected behavior can help you identify employees who violate company policy.

Pros of UBA

You have a security system, of course. If there is a hole, UBA will catch it so you can patch it. Numerous top industry experts agree that adding innovation to your security stack is the only way to stay on top of the game.

True Anomaly Detection

Due to its analysis and incorporation of user behavior rather than just system events, UBA provides more pertinent data than SEIM systems.

Predicts Attacks from Inside Your Network

Predicts Attacks From Inside Your Network

Increase Organizational Effectiveness

Examine your organization’s review procedures to determine their true impact. Now that you have a new process, is work getting done more quickly or is it taking longer? UBA enables you to conduct workflow A/B tests within your company to determine how your changes will affect overall business effectiveness and efficiency.

Cons of UBA

‘Black Swan’ Events

In some user profiles, certain events have never happened. UBA that uses machine learning can occasionally flag these behaviors as suspicious if a user begins a new role, has a project that requires access to a new file, or uses a new resource. These situations are referred to as “black swan” events. Alert fatigue, which generally refers to having too many alerts and being unsure of which ones to prioritize first, can be brought on by black swan events.

Machine Learning is Still Stabilizing

Some individuals have little to no confidence in machine learning. Due to this, organizations are reluctant to adopt user behavior analytics systems and have conflicting opinions about the accuracy of the analytics.

Conclusion Onuser Behavior Analytics

User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), also known as user behavior analytics (UBA), is the process of gathering insight into the network events that users generate every day.

Metrics related to user behavior include sign-up rates, activation rates, feature usage and impact, funnel drop-off for in-app purchases, and retention rates.

Your team will become product-led and customer experience-driven if you act on data about user behavior. Decisions about product development and marketing will be based on actionable data rather than conjecture.

Read More: How to Do a Customer Needs Analysis?

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