A lot of security processes failed during the breach of Target’s systems during last year’s holiday season, but one surprising revelation was that the retailer actually did receive security alerts about the malware in its system. Yet because the security team was bombarded with alerts — estimated at hundreds per day — it couldn’t adequately prioritize them.

Both within the security field and in other areas, that’s a problem that a lot of companies face in the big data era: The top priority is to dig out useful insights from the wealth of data that’s coming at them from multiple sources. They’re trying to get the right data to the right person at the right time; in fact, the goal is to deliver insights in near real time. The result is a discipline that many in IT are calling “fast data.”

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