IBM today (8 December 2015) made some interesting information security announcements. The first was that IBM is opening the APIs of its IBM Security QRadar to allow developers to build custom apps utilizing the platform’s advanced security intelligence capabilities. The second announcement is that IBM has created a marketplace community called IBM Security App Exchange to engage developers to create and share apps based on the company’s security technologies.

The rationale behind IBM opening up the APIs for QRadar is to extend the ecosystem to encourage and engage developers and partners to further utilize the capabilities of its advanced security platform and take it deeper into the enterprise. In the newly built community, IBM and partners including Bit9 + Carbon Black, BrightPoint Security, Exabeam and Resilient Systems already have populated this exchange with dozens of customized apps that extend IBM Security QRadar security analytics in areas like user behavior, endpoint data and incident visualization. This opening of the APIs allows the security community to rapidly build new QRadar applications using software developer kits. IBM Security will be monitoring and testing every application before it is posted to the App Exchange to examine the integrity of these community contributions to the platform.

To further address cyber threats in the enterprise space, there is a need for a more open and collaborative approach to security to get more developers involved and more applications integrated into the advanced platform of IBM. Enlarging the ecosystem will allow IBM to integration with third-party technologies and provide even better visibility into more types of data threats.

“With thousands of customers now standardizing on IBM’s security technologies, opening this platform for closer collaboration and development with partners and customers changes the economics of fighting cybercrime,” said Marc van Zadelhoff, Vice President, Strategy and Product Management, IBM Security. “Sharing expertise across the security industry will allow us to innovate more quickly in order to help stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated attacks.”

Who benefits from this announcement are software security tool developers wanting to partner with IBM Security to get access to some of the best security analytics out there. IBM Security operates one of the world’s broadest security research and development, and delivery organizations.

IBM was also announcing today a new release of IBM Security QRadar, which further integrates QRadar with IBM BigFix endpoint security management to help customers better prioritize threats and patches on user devices.