SIEM acronym stands for Security Information and Event Management software. It does threat detection, real-time reporting, and continuous analytics of security logs and incidents. It is beneficial in securing businesses of all sizes. SIEM gathers security information from network devices, servers, domain controllers, and other sources. This tool stores, normalizes, aggregates, and analyzes data to discover trends, detect threats, and allow organizations to examine any warnings.
UNDERSTANDING HOW SIEM WORKS
In general, SIEM solutions pull together log and event data derived from programs, devices, networks, infrastructure, and systems to do an in-depth analysis of an organizations' IT state. SIEM is based either on the cloud or on the company's onsite environment. It utilizes rules and statistical correlations to come up with an actionable insight. It investigates every data and sorts threat activities based on its risk level. This helps security teams determine malicious actors and stop cyberattacks.
SIEM solution identifies and categorizes potentially malicious activities. Once the software detects an activity that could pose a threat to the organization, alerts are created to inform security teams about a potential issue. These alerts may fall either in low or high priority depending on the predefined rules.
For instance, a user entered wrong credentials on a certain application 10 times. This could be flagged as a suspicious activity, but may be under lower priority since it's also possible that the user just forgot his login details.
However, if an account reaches 100 failed login attempts in a little time, this could be a brute-force attack in progress and may be labeled as a high priority incident.
The core features of SIEM include:
- Security monitoring
- Threat detection at the highest level
- Forensics and incident management
- Collection of logs
- Normalization
- Notifications and warnings
- Detecting security incidents
- Threat response workflow
Benefits of SIEM
SIEM or Security Information and Event Management solutions offer multiple benefits. Let's take a look at them.
Increased efficiency
As the software gathers event logs from multiple endpoints across networks, employees can identify potential issues within a short period. It eases the checking activity and speeds up file analysis, enabling employees to finish tasks quickly and spend more time on other projects. SIEM solution or security information and event management bolsters reporting processes throughout the business.
Handling of security incidents
SIEM solution can significantly reduce the impact of a security breach on your business by responding quickly to any security events detected. The proactiveness of SIEM solution can also lessen the possible damage that could hit the company and its IT systems in place.
Compliance
Compliance doesn't only affect large businesses. Every business, regardless of size, across all industries are required to follow certain regulatory mandates. Failure to follow compliance mandates can result in consumer complaints, sales losses, and legal costs of resolving litigation.
Fortunately, compliance has long been a feature of SIEM products, dating back to their earliest versions. While compliance may not be as important in new next-generation SIEM solutions, it is still an important feature.
SIEM solutions offer unique report templates for compliance regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, etc. In addition, it uses the data it collects to supply details on the templates, saving your team time and resources.
SIEM Normalizes Data
Your IT environment consists of various applications, login ports, databases, and devices. Each of them generates plaintext data, which could take up a lot of space over time. Collecting all of it can be challenging. Each one creates, formats, and distributes data in a very different way. Making sense of it all and manually detecting associated security events suggestive of a compromise are impossible tasks.
Fortunately, SIEM solutions can normalize this data. They can reformat it based on your preference, allowing for consistency in log management and easy correlation.
Making the Most of a SIEM
Different organizations use SIEM systems to expedite threat detection and response. It collects security incident data from various sources and consolidates it into one location, allowing IT teams to view the overall picture of the network. The alerts collected enable the quick and complete examination of events.
Finding a reliable vendor that meets your business's goals for long-term scalability is crucial. They must also be able to assist your team in quickly deploying a solution to obtain the best return on investment.
If you're planning to deploy a cloud-based SIEM solution, partner with Xcitium. Contact us now to discuss your requirements!
