Dataminr Pulse for Corporate Security vs. VirusTotal

For any news editor, Dataminr is a must. It is the only platform I have used which I would 100 percent recommend to anyone who needs constant access and notification to all that is going on in the world's media. Various other platforms provide information, but Dataminr collates all these other platforms together into one easy to use interface. It is remarkably quick to check Dataminr after receiving a desktop or email notification and find out what is going on regarding a specific subject. As a news editor, I am required to manage a news team that produces copy for breaking stories, and Dataminr allows me to find news and commission it faster than any other platform I have previously used.

Incentivized

VirusTotal is perfectly suited as a tool to help security professionals analyze files and URLs that require further analysis to determine security risks in the environment. It truly is a must-have in this world we live in!

Incentivized

• Collating various sources into one interface makes keeping track of breaking news remarkably easy.
• The live update feature means updates from breaking stories are fed directly to the consumer. This means users do not have to go out their way to find out every last detail of a story, and can instead use their time writing the story.

Incentivized

• Fast file scanning
• No agent required
• Available from anywhere

Incentivized

• Setting up Dataminr can be relatively obtuse. Although basic functions are easy to use, the more in-depth aspects require research and training to use correctly.
• Topics are very broad, which can be a negative at times. It would be useful to have 'football' as a topic rather than 'sport', for instance.

Incentivized

• I'm not sure VirusTotal can improve this themselves but just keeping up with the evolving "known" threat landscape is tough so even though VirusTotal is very good, nothing is 100% effective in this space.

Incentivized

Connection issues/downtime occur but they are rare and generally quickly fixed. There are frequent seminars and tutorials to teach the platform. This is an excellent decision from the company and has made me more willing to learn how to use Dataminr correctly. As a result of this, I use the platform more than I would have if I had been forced to learn everything myself.

Incentivized

Before using Dataminr we did not use a similar platform, with stories discovered by simply crawling the web (TweetDeck/Reddit/news sites, etc). Because of this, Dataminr has been a game-changer for us and has revolutionized the way we have worked since it was introduced. Being able to completely remove one aspect of the job (searching for news) has increased productivity in all other areas.

Incentivized

Honestly, we have always used VirusTotal, its a leader in the industry and meets our needs perfectly so we have never had the need to look elsewhere

Incentivized

• Since starting to use Dataminr, our traffic has vastly increased. Though not entirely to thank for the growth, Dataminr has played a role in talkSPORT.com's ComScore increasing by 150 percent over the past 18 months.
• Increased traffic is partly due to producing more content, and Dataminr has directly led to discovering a number of stories we previously would have missed.

Incentivized

• Extremely useful to confirm if a file is suspicious or not

Incentivized