What Is SIEM and Who Should Have It?

What is SIEM and who should have it at a COUPLE of GURUS

With the proliferation of data breaches and cyber threats, companies are constantly looking for reliable and cost-effective cybersecurity products to shield themselves from attacks. One such product is Security Information and Event Management, or SIEM for short.

You’ve likely heard about SIEM, but you might be unsure what it means or why you need it. SIEM solutions are designed to help businesses defend themselves against cyber threats by collecting, analyzing, and responding to security events.

To help determine whether a SIEM tool is right for your organization, we’ll start by defining what SIEM is, how it works, and who should use the solution.

Let’s start!

What Is Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)?

SIEM is a framework that helps you monitor, manage, and make sense of your cybersecurity. It’s both a technology and a process that combines security information management with security event management. SIEM solutions collect, analyze, and report on data from log files generated by network hardware (such as firewalls), software (such Microsoft Office), and other devices or services.

The tool may also provide real-time alerts to help you detect anomalies and attacks against your company before they cause serious damage. It will allow you to investigate the root cause of any attack or incident and take the appropriate action.

A good SIEM solution provides you with the opportunity to get ahead of cybersecurity threats in your environment while also helping you comply with industry compliance regulations like CMMC, HIPAA, or PCI DSS regarding data management.

How Does SIEM Work?

SIEM works by gathering immense log and event data generated by your company’s host system, applications, and security devices. It then aggregates and consolidates the data to make them as human-readable as possible. With the data organized and laid out on your fingerprints, you can identify data security breaches and potential threats with as much detail as needed.

The technology examines data collected from firewall logs, antivirus events, and other sources, and groups them into various classes such as malware activities and failed/successful logins. Once it identifies malicious actors or threats to the organization’s system, it will send alerts to your security team or a SOC (Security Operations Center). It will also generate a report, including the details of the potential threats based on specific commands to help the team mitigate cyberattacks quickly.

A company’s IT department cannot simply deploy SIEM and expect the security responses to take place magically. Even modern automated SIEM technologies need proper configuration and then a professional review of the results by a human. Luckily, we can help with SIEM setup and monitoring as a managed cybersecurity service provider.

With that said, most SIEM products vary, but they share certain essential capabilities, including:

Log Data Collection

SIEM technology gathers and stores a vast amount of data from various sources on an organization’s network. After that, the solutions compare, correlate, and analyze all the disparate data in real-time. The outcome of the analysis helps to pinpoint the potential signs of vulnerability, attack, or data breach.

Furthermore, some SIEM software can integrate with real-time threat intelligence feeds. This allows the security solution to link its internal security data to already discovered threat profiles and signatures. As such, the software can identify and block new cybersecurity threats.

Event Analysis and Correlation

Using advanced analytics, the SIEM tools can analyze multifaceted data patterns with ease and link them with corresponding events. The correlation helps the IT security team quickly identify and mitigate threats that might bring damage to the company’s system.

Incident Surveillance and Security Alerts

SIEM solutions enable both cloud-based and on-premise centralized management structures so they can recognize all entities in the IT environment. As a result, the technologies examine security incidents across all endpoints on a company’s network and categorizes the detected anomalies.

Through customizable correlation rules, the security team can receive alerts of abnormal behaviors. They can then take immediate action to address them before they can materialize into big problems.

Why Is SIEM Important?

Below are the main reasons organizations need SIEM in place for their business.

Better Security Analysis

SIEM solutions allow companies to integrate risk assessment services hassle-free. SIEM makes it possible to analyze an organization’s network behavior depending on the events and factors based on security sources for a specific condition.

Detecting Incidents

SIEM software identifies occurrences that normally go unnoticed. It achieves that by examining log entries to discover indicators of threats and malicious patterns. Besides, SIEM collects events across all sources connected to the company’s network and re-creates attack timelines. Therefore, administrators can identify the nature of the attack and its impact. It also recommends security controls.

Regulation of Compliances

Most organizations use SIEM solutions to shield their most sensitive data and provide proof they are doing so. This way, they can meet industry compliance regulations such as CMMS and HIPAA. These companies often use the technology to create reports that address relevant logged security events across sources in the network.

Without this tool, a company might need to retrieve log data and generate individual reports manually. This is usually labor-intensive and time-consuming, especially if you’re dealing with several operating systems, apps, and other pieces of software logging your security events.

Efficient Incident Management

SIEM technologies can boost your company’s efficiency in responding to and handling incidents. Thus, saving your security team resources and time. More efficient incident management means quick incident containment and reduced damage posed by potential threats.

Who Should Have SIEM?

Small businesses with limited IT resources: If your company doesn’t have a dedicated IT department, SIEM can do the work of many additional systems and security administrators.

Organizations with sensitive data: If you’re required to comply with regulations like CMMC, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS, having a SIEM solution is the easiest way to ensure that you’re putting appropriate checks and balances in place to prevent breaches.

Companies experiencing rapid growth with their IT systems: If your network and user base is growing quickly, it’s easy for your IT infrastructure to become too complex to manage effectively without aid. SIEM can take care of some of that management burden so that you can focus on scaling up appropriately as needed.

Conclusion

In conclusion, SIEM solutions help businesses keep their data secure by monitoring real-time logs, detecting threats, and responding quickly to incidents. It’s a great fit for organizations of any size with IT infrastructure, especially those with sensitive data or subject to compliance regulations.

On that note, if you’re looking for SIEM vendors or managed cybersecurity services, please feel free to contact us today!