Analytics

Analytics is processing data to discover and interpret meaningful patterns therein. Analytics is a combination of the fields of databases, statistics, and data sciences. Companies may apply analytics for a variety of use cases. Imagination is the limit for deciding what you can do with data analytics. Some examples that might sound familiar around data analytics are companies trying to find out what type of products are being bought by users, what destinations are frequently visited by a taxi user, what phone applications are used by a particular user, and so on.

A lot of this lies in the application domain. However, data analytics is being increasingly used in the networking and security domains as well. For example, what is the normal traffic pattern on the network? What are the different protocols on the network? Is there a higher than average traffic on the network for a given protocol/user? Who are the top users on the network? What are the top traffic types on the network?

Some of this is being used in technologies called Network Behavior Analysis (NBA) using protocols such as NetFlow, to get more visibility into the network, and to detect any indicators of compromise from a security standpoint. We will cover the security aspects in Chapter 8, Understanding and Configuring Network Security.