What Is SIEM? Security Information and Event Management Guide

• SIEM Definition

  SIEM Definition

  Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) consolidates Security Information Management (SIM) for real-time aggregation and analysis of log data and Security Event Management (SEM). SIEM software is built to provide intelligent event correlation, threat detection, and incident response to support a more comprehensive security posture across IT infrastructure.
• How does SIEM work?

  How does SIEM work?

  Security information and event management tools can help simplify real-time threat detection, analysis, and troubleshooting using the following features:

  • Data Aggregation: SIEM systems gather data from end-user devices, networks, servers, and security systems, such as antivirus and firewalls, across an IT infrastructure using agents. The collected data is stored in a centralized system to provide a universal view for better analysis and monitoring.
  • Log Monitoring: Using SIEM tools, you can choose which types of logs to monitor to gain deeper insights. For example, if you’d like to better understand service and system activity, monitoring Windows system logs and application logs can help. If you’re concerned with remaining PCI compliant, you can monitor the specific logs from applicable system and network devices.
  • Data Correlation: SIEM systems can apply correlation rules to consolidate and categorize disparate logs and event data into relevant security issues that may warrant further action for better security.
  • Reporting and Alerts: SIEM solutions can provide detailed reports and dashboards to visually present log data and event information to support more effective monitoring. SIEM tools can also trigger real-time notifications when detecting a threat or on activation of a correlation rule for proactive response management.
• Challenges of traditional SIEM security solutions

  Challenges of traditional SIEM security solutions

  Organizations using legacy security information and event management solutions to manage data security operations and the incident response process may often grapple with the following limitations:

  • Hassles in Data Collection and Correlation: Traditional SIEM security solutions can struggle to collect large volumes of data from multiple sources seamlessly. Manual data correlation can also be a complicated and time-consuming task.
  • Growing Costs: The total cost of ownership (TCO) for setting up and maintaining legacy SIEM systems can be a burden for an organization. With growing data volumes, the overheads, including personnel cost, maintenance, and support charges, can rise, and organizations may experience limited value at higher costs.
  • Complex Manual Investigation: Lack of automation can hinder the detailed analysis of extensive data. Manual log management and event correlation can also result in irrelevant information, further complicating threat identification and analysis.
  • Delayed Response: Time is of the essence when managing and monitoring threat environments. Delay in prioritizing high-risk activities and lack of real-time monitoring can restrict IT security teams from proactively identifying potential security threats and mitigating the affects.
• Need for a modern SIEM software

  Need for a modern SIEM software

  Organizations can leverage modern SIEM tools to empower their security teams to strengthen information security posture. Security information and event management solutions are built to offer robust threat detection, intelligent analytics, real-time reporting, and security alerts, which can help organizations better safeguard their IT infrastructures. Key benefits from the features available in powerful and dynamic security information and event management software can include:

  • Higher Efficiency: Smart, automated SIEM software solutions can reduce the turnaround time to detect threats, which can help you minimize the effects. Centralized log management can further reduce the efforts to collect and analyze log information from multiple sources.
  • Proactive Threat Detection: Identifying sophisticated attacks is critical for safeguarding businesses in today’s highly digital world. Modern SIEM tools can continuously provide threat detection monitoring and alerting, with automated processes to detect threats across your devices and services to minimize manual detection efforts.
  • Effective Threat Intelligence: Security information and event management solutions are built to help businesses perform detailed forensic analysis and drill down the causes and context for analyzing specific scenarios. This includes comparing activities against a list of known malicious threat vectors using threat intelligence feeds to perform proactive cyberthreat analysis.
  • Real-Time Response Management: SIEM software solutions can improve data security monitoring and reporting with intuitive data visualization and real-time security alerts to help security teams improve decision making and minimize response time.
  • Cost Optimization: As businesses generate increasingly high volumes of data, monitoring and analyzing massive data may exhaust budgets. Modern SIEM security solutions help companies scale seamlessly without incurring huge fixed costs and maintenance overheads. Flexible pricing models can also help optimize costs in the long run.
• Capabilities of SIEM solutions

  Capabilities of SIEM solutions

  SIEM software can offer many features to help you more easily detect threats and demonstrate compliance. Some of the key capabilities to consider when choosing a security information and event management solution include:

   

  • Threat Detection: Security information and event management software can allow security teams to run customized queries to pinpoint potential security threats, log file anomalies, and suspicious activity from firewalls, IDS/IPS devices and applications, network devices, and other applications.
  • Correlation: To effectively detect threats and attack patterns, correlating log data and related events can help you more easily identify potential security incidents for further analysis.
  • Threat Intelligence and Analytics: Security teams are increasingly turning to SIEM software solutions to analyze log data and insights from threat intelligence feeds in one place.
  • Data Visualization and Compliance Reporting: Security information and event management software with built-in data visualization capabilities can allow you to more quickly review and monitor event data, identify trends, and pinpoint anomalies for quick actions. Some modern SIEM solutions can also support compliance reporting to help demonstrate data security measures are sufficient and more easily uncover policy violations, identify attacks, and threats.
• How to choose the right SIEM software

  How to choose the right SIEM software

  Security information and event management software solutions can empower companies to detect security threats, manage incident response in real time, and generate reports to help demonstrate internal and external compliance requirements more easily.

  While organizations may have varied security requirements, it’s crucial to consider factors such as organization size, IT infrastructure, and costs when selecting the SIEM security solution that best fits business needs. Evaluating whether the SIEM tool can automate data collection, correlation, and analysis to accelerate threat detection, investigation, and incident response management can also be important. The SIEM solution should offer intuitive, detailed, and customizable dashboards and reports to help streamline operations and provide in-depth insights, with the ability to provide real-time alerts that can trigger automated actions for quicker incident response.