Strengthening Data Security and Compliance with Database Activity Monitoring for a Global Pharmaceutical Leader
The client faced critical gaps in database and application security, limited visibility into sensitive data activity, inconsistent policies across environments and high false positive volumes that hampered Security Operations Center (SOC)efficiency. By deploying IBM Guardium with User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)/ML-enabled monitoring, centralized policy enforcement and SIEM integration, the company achieved continuous protection of sensitive data, faster threat detection and a scalable, compliant security framework.
The Challenge
The organization faced critical challenges in database and application security, including limited visibility into sensitive data activities, inconsistent security policies, inefficient threat monitoring due to false positives and inadequate user access controls, leading to heightened risk exposure and operational inefficiencies.
- Addressing critical gaps in database and application security posture, including visibility, monitoring and incident response
- Lack of centralized visibility into sensitive data activities and database vulnerabilities
- Inconsistent security policies across multiple platforms and environments, leading to increased risk exposure
- High volume of false positives and manual interventions, creating inefficiencies in threat monitoring and incident handling
- Gaps in user access controls and privilege management increase the risk of unauthorized access and data misuse
Objective
To enhance data security by mitigating breach risks, establish a scalable security framework with real-time threat detection, reduce manual SOC workload, centralize database activity monitoring and improve privilege management through advanced analytics and ML-driven UEBA.
- Ensure robust protection of sensitive data and mitigate the risk of data breaches via continuous monitoring, enforcement and access control
- Establish a scalable, compliant security framework with real-time threat detection to strengthen the company’s overall security posture
- Reduce false positives and SOC manual workload so analysts can focus on high-risk incidents
- Centralize visibility and auditing of database activity to meet compliance and forensic requirements
- Improve privilege management and detect anomalous user behavior using UEBA and ML techniques
The Solution
The solution involved deploying IBM Guardium for centralized database security, real-time monitoring and risk assessment, while integrating UEBA/ML for anomaly detection. Key actions included tuning detection rules to reduce false positives, implementing data protection controls, monitoring privileged activities and forwarding logs to enterprise SIEMs for advanced analytics and compliance.
- Deployed IBM Guardium to analyze database activity and enforce centralized data security policies across all environments
- Implemented real-time monitoring and heuristic policies to provide clear visibility into actions performed on databases, identify vulnerabilities and assess risk
- Enabled UEBA/ML-based behavioral profiling to detect medium/high risk activities and anomalous behavior patterns
- Tuned outcome of ML cases to eliminate false positives and enable SOC teams to focus on critical alerts
- Monitored administrator and system activities to trigger alerts for privilege escalation, unauthorized account creation, configuration changes and stored-procedure modifications
- Forwarded syslog and audit events to enterprise SIEMs (Azure Sentinel) for correlation, long-term retention and advanced analytics
The Impact
Through IBM Guardium’s real-time monitoring, heuristic policies and UEBA/ML behavioral profiling, the client gained deep visibility into normal user and application activity patterns. Deviations from these baselines now trigger immediate alerts and automated preventive actions, significantly reducing insider threats, unauthorized access and potential data breaches. The company strengthened its overall data security posture, improved incident response efficiency and achieved centralized compliance visibility.
- Centralized, continuous visibility: Provided a single pane of glass visibility for database access and sensitive-data activity across 45 applications and 600 production databases, enabling faster forensic analysis and compliance reporting
- High-fidelity detection and reduced noise: UEBA/ML behavioral baselines and tuned heuristics filtered out false positives, delivering fewer but higher-confidence alerts and reducing SOC triage time and MTTI
- Early detection of bad actors: Adaptive profiling and heuristic policies surfaced anomalous user behaviors and compromised accounts earlier, preventing potential escalation and data exfiltration
- Privileged activity monitoring: Continuous tracking of admin/system actions (privilege escalation, unauthorized accounts, configuration or stored-procedure changes) enabled rapid detection of misuse and insider threats
- Manual preventive actions: Rule-based and ML-driven responses triggered containment workflows for deviations from behavioral baselines, reducing dwell time and limiting impact
- SIEM-enabled enterprise correlation: Streaming syslog/audit events into Azure Sentinel enabled cross-domain correlation, long-term retention and richer investigative context
- Operational and compliance gains: SOC efficiency improved as analysts moved from noisy triage to proactive threat hunting; detailed audit logs simplified regulatory audits and evidence collection
