When Milliseconds Matter: Protecting Critical Infrastructure With Real-Time Security Intelligence

Summary

Modern businesses are increasingly reliant on technological advancements, regardless of the industry sector. There is no escaping the rapid pressure to be one step ahead of cyber threats, before they happen. Whether safeguarding customer information, ensuring regulatory compliance or maintaining uninterrupted service free from disruptions, the need for real-time awareness and rapid response has become a strategic imperative. This is where Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) becomes essential.

SIEM software solutions give organizations a centralized view of their digital environments, enabling them to detect anomalies, investigate incidents and respond to threats with speed and precision. By turning data into actionable insights, SIEM empowers businesses to move from a reactive to a proactive security position, bolstering customer trust and business growth for market share. 

The monitoring blindspot in critical infrastructure

When critical infrastructure such as pipelines and power grids gets compromised, consequences extend far beyond data loss. Yet many security teams still rely on tools designed primarily for non-critical IT environments. The approach to security is often misaligned with operational needs, given the fact that many systems were designed long before cybersecurity became a must-have. 

Threats to critical infrastructure have the potential to affect the very systems that keep our society functioning. Take, for example, the recent power outages that happened across Spain, Portugal and Southern France on April 28th. For several hours, these regions plunged into darkness, affecting phone and internet coverage, and even leaving train passengers stranded. Cash was suddenly the only accepted means of payment, but due to the power outage, users could not get cash out from ATMs. In the aftermath, Spanish authorities have launched several investigations to determine the cause as well as how to prevent another occurrence.
 

How SIEM plays a key role

SIEM systems can play a crucial role in addressing security threats. Their key strength lies in real-time detection and response, helping security teams act before incidents escalate. By collecting and analyzing real-time logs from servers, applications and network devices, SIEMs monitor activities like login attempts and file access for signs of suspicious behavior. Once analyzed, the data is normalized and correlated to identify potential threats and trigger alerts for rapid response.
 
Modern power grids are composed of tens of thousands of devices connected to the internet, like inverters, sensors and Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs). SIEM systems can analyze logs from all these sources, which are often not aware of each other’s presence, and provide a centralized view of the network's security posture. Through continued real-time monitoring and correlating events across all the network devices, a grid operator can identify attacks with the potential to disrupt power supply or transmission. Security teams can keep detailed reports and audit trails of every single event to allow for fault isolation and post-incident investigation.

The stream processing advantage: How today’s enterprises are benefiting

The future is seeing a shift to smarter, faster decisions, especially in sensitive security environments. Take, for example, one of Ververica’s customers, Booking.com. The company processes large volumes of data to provide a secure end-to-end experience for their users. Their security teams leverage data streaming to build solutions that maintain robust access control while complying with segregation-of-duty (SOD) principles - an essential requirement in an environment handling sensitive customer information across global operations.
Organizations implementing stream-based security intelligence consistently report performance improvements that translate to meaningful risk reduction. What was historically batch processed at intervals has now evolved to integrate a real-time model to keep pace with today’s modern threats.

Organizations that embrace stream-based security intelligence consistently see measurable improvements:

• Threat detection accelerates from minutes to seconds.
• Response becomes proactive, allowing action before damage occurs, not after.

By processing security telemetry at creation rather than after collection, organizations can identify and respond to threats before damage occurs, transforming security from reactive to proactive.

Building effective real-time security intelligence

Implementing effective real-time security for critical infrastructure requires rethinking several core security functions:

1. Event correlation across domains: Industrial attacks rarely limit themselves to a single system. They move between business networks and operational technology. Effective detection requires analyzing patterns across both domains simultaneously.
2. Contextual analysis in motion: Security events can't be evaluated in isolation. Streaming data enables analysis while maintaining the relationships between events—the who, what, when, and where—that reveal attack patterns.
3. Automated response capabilities: When threats emerge in milliseconds, human response times become the limiting factor. Automation becomes essential for containing threats before impact.

Ververica’s customer One Mount Group, Vietnam’s consumer application trusted by millions of users, demonstrates how this approach works at scale. They've implemented real-time detection capabilities for millions of financial transactions daily, monitoring for suspicious patterns that might indicate security breaches. By standardizing their streaming application management, they've created a foundation that supports both security monitoring and fraud detection across their entire technological ecosystem.

The organizations seeing the greatest success don't replace existing security investments. Instead, they enhance traditional tools with stream processing capabilities that address the specific gaps in critical infrastructure protection.

Moving forward: Practical next steps

Critical infrastructure protection doesn't transform overnight, but organizations can take meaningful steps toward real-time security:

• Map your control systems: Document exactly where operational technology connects with business systems to identify potential attack paths.
• Measure your detection gap: How quickly could you identify unauthorized changes to control parameters? If the answer isn't measured in seconds, your risk exposure is significant.
• Develop in streaming data expertise: Build internal capabilities in real-time data analysis - the foundation of modern security operations.
• Invest in your human resources: Technology alone doesn't solve security challenges. The human element remains valuable for response for both newcomers and for investing in your workforce. 
• Incorporate dynamic complex event processing into your security teams: Dynamic complex event processing and real-time data enrichment yield winning results for precise detection rules that adapt to emerging threats on the fly.

The reality for critical infrastructure security is straightforward: when physical systems and digital controls intersect, traditional security approaches simply can't keep pace. The threats emerge in milliseconds, while detection operates in hours or days.

Closing this gap requires more than incremental improvements to existing tools. It demands a fundamental shift in security architecture - from batch to stream processing. Organizations making this transition don't just improve metrics; they build truly resilient security operations capable of protecting our most essential systems and services.