Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is a log management tool which collects, stores and searches through logs to track activity within your organisation. It then studies this data to establish whether there is any abnormal behaviour occurring within the network and alerts your security team based on pre-set analytics. SIEM combines both security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM) into a single, central system which is easier to analyse. Many organisations use SIEM to streamline the manual processes involved in the detection of threats and speeds up the efficiency of your security system through automatic reporting and response.

What does SIEM do?

SIEM has successfully evolved through AI to become a sophisticated and efficient solution for threat detection and incident response. The main roles of a SIEM include detecting suspicious user activity, monitoring user behaviour, limiting access attempts and generating compliance reports, all which are necessary for threat hunting security teams. The solution provides a central view of potential attackers, with real-time threat detection.

Why do you need SIEM?

SIEM is a vital tool for your organisation because it provides visibility into users’ activity throughout your infrastructure. As a result, there is greater transparency in monitoring users, applications, and devices, which is all valuable information for the running of your company. For example, it may be beneficial for monitoring long terms trends within the organisation, which can be used for company financial and growth projections. Most importantly, it is used to identify cyber attacks by feeding dashboards that help security analysts to spot spikes or trends in activity which may be suspicious.

Implementing a SIEM solution completes the ‘SOC triad’ (Network Detection and Response (NDR), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)) which is vital for an entirely protected network environment. The triad provides security teams with the tools they need to be proactive when protecting the organisation.

The solution employs advanced threat intelligence to detect unknown threats or ones IT security teams may be unable to find manually. Therefore, it takes the current level of expertise higher, which is important in the constantly evolving cyber threat landscape. Modern solutions need to be fast and flexible, both of which SIEM can achieve.

It also provides compliance for regulations such as HIPAA, PCI, SOX, and GDPR. These are important to retain brand legitimacy. Advancing further, it assures regulatory compliance auditing and reporting which are increasingly important.

Accumulatively, this gives your security team the knowledge and capability to ensure a quick and effective response in the instance of any suspicious activity within the network.

Security compliance, visibility of threats, and posture reporting all depend on real-time security monitoring – and that only comes when structure is applied to your IT and security logs. However, a combination of increased cyberthreats, the security skills gap, and the level of management a SIEM tool requires often results in companies making the difficult decision to de-prioritise their security monitoring projects. Yet, with the right partner to efficiently manage your log ingestion all companies can enjoy the benefits of a SIEM at accessible price.