Cybersecurity in Big Data Era: From Securing Big Data to Data-Driven Security

‘‘Knowledge is power” is an old adage that has been found to be true in today’s information age. Knowledge is derived from having access to information. The ability to gather information from large volumes of data has become an issue of relative importance. Big Data Analytics (BDA) is the term coined by researchers to describe the art of processing, storing and gathering large amounts of data for future examination. Data is being produced at an alarming rate. The rapid growth of the Internet, Internet of Things (IoT) and other technological advances are the main culprits behind this sustained growth. The data generated is a reflection of the environment it is produced out of, thus we can use the data we get out of systems to figure out the inner workings of that system. This has become an important feature in cybersecurity where the goal is to protect assets. Furthermore, the growing value of data has made big data a high value target. In this paper, we explore recent research works in cybersecurity in relation to big data. We highlight how big data is protected and how big data can also be used as a tool for cybersecurity. We summarize recent works in the form of tables and have presented trends, open research challenges and problems. With this paper, readers can have a more thorough understanding of cybersecurity in the big data era, as well as research trends and open challenges in this active research area.