What does "user behavior analytics" (UBA) analyze in an IDS?

User behavior analytics (UBA) focuses on understanding and assessing the actions of users within a network or system to identify anomalies that could indicate potential insider threats. By monitoring baseline user behaviors, UBA establishes what typical activity looks like for each user, including patterns of logins, data access, file transfers, and other system interactions. When deviations from these established patterns occur, they can signal malicious activity, such as data exfiltration or unauthorized access.

UBA is particularly valuable in a security context because it helps to detect threats that traditional signature-based detection methods might miss. For instance, an insider may not be detected if they operate within normal network parameters but exhibit sudden changes in their behavior.

Analyzing network performance metrics, assessing hardware vulnerabilities, or examining third-party software interactions are not the primary objectives of UBA, as these focus more on external factors and technical characteristics rather than the specific behavior and actions of users themselves.