As cyber threats become more sophisticated, it is in an organization’s best interest to ensure they employ security tools up to the task. One of the security tools that can handle even the most complex cyber threats is Security information and event management (SIEM).
Many reasons make organizations go for this security solution or use a platform that offers an integration of this tool. Thus, in this article, you will learn how SIEMs work and what makes companies and businesses add them to their security strategy.
What is SIEM, And How Does it Work?
The full meaning of SIEM is security information and event management, and it is a security solution or protocol that helps protect an organization from so many cyber threats. This security solution’s protection is not only about threats but also vulnerabilities coming from some of the organization’s setups. In its basic form, what a SIEM solution does is that it monitors what is happening to an organization network to detect abnormalities and respond to them.
Exploring the benefits of implementing SIEM can help an organization in many ways, from preventing threats to compliance management. To do this, SIEM solutions might vary in their capabilities, but they have the same primary or core method of working:
● Log Collection and Management
To secure any organization, one of the first things a SIEM solution does is to collect and manage data logs from different sources. Basically, what these solutions do is the collection of data logs from different places such as networks, cloud workloads, user endpoints, security hardware and software, and even applications. Upon collection, this data is often sent to a centralized point where the risk and penetration levels are decided.
● Analysis and Event Correlation
Immediately after the log management is the correlation of events, which involves using sophisticated technologies to analyze and detect complex data patterns. Furthermore, event correlation provides more insight into how certain threats occur and how organizations can make efforts to mitigate them.
● Incident Monitoring and Response
In most cases, the data collected from log management and the information from event correlation are sent to a centralized location or dashboard. The benefit of this is that the organization’s security operations center (SOC) collectively monitors what is happening in real time, identifies threats, and responds to them. While responding to threats, some next-gen SIEMs like Stellarcyber.ai have been programmed to handle certain threats without the help of the security team. However, some SIEMs would need to send security alerts to enable the SOC to respond to them.
● Data Retention, Reporting, and Compliance Management
In SIEM, everything does not end with responding to threats. In fact, a crucial role of this security solution is data retention, reporting, and the helping with compliance management. Because of the automated data collection, SIEM often seems invaluable in retaining data, generating reports for forensic examination, and meeting compliance requirements. Hence, any organization that needs compliance reports for HIPPA, SOX, PCI-DSS, and GDPR will find a SIEM solution crucial.
Why SIEM Integration is Important to an Organization’s Security Strategy
Organizations often employ different security solutions in their security strategies, and SIEM needs to be one of them for many reasons, including:
● Effectiveness and Efficiency of Security Operations
One of the major reasons that calls for integrating SIEM into an organization’s security strategy is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its security operations. Furthermore, the automation that comes with most SIEMs eliminates some of the recorded mechanical and human errors. Also, a centralized location for storing and analyzing data enables better communication between different organizational departments.
● Prevention of Insider Threats
In recent years, insider threats have ranked as one of the major security issues many organizations face, and the damages recorded are pretty overwhelming. Insider threat is when someone who has authorized access to an organization helps cyber attackers or poses a security threat to an organization. Hence, one way to prevent scenarios such as this is using security solutions that contain next-gen SIEM capabilities, such as Stellarcyber.ai.
The reason behind this is relatively straightforward. SIEM often employs a zero-trust approach to monitor, detect threats, and respond. Hence, it does not matter if it is an insider carrying out an attack; as long as it detects such an attack, it will immediately alert and respond.
● Benefits from AI and Machine Learning Capabilities
Some SIEMs now allow the integration of AI technologies, providing an avenue for more advanced protection. Using AI and machine learning means an organization’s security team can handle more complicated threat intelligence and respond to incidents more effectively. Furthermore, the security operations center spends less time and resources with the addition of security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR).
● Recognition of Threats in Real-time
In many organizations, they are often passive in the way they respond to threats because the security solutions in their arsenal are often standalone. Not that they are unnecessary, but using only security solutions such as firewalls or antivirus software does not guarantee proactive detection of threats.
Thus, deploying SIEMs often ensures that a company or business can detect threats in real-time. Moreover, integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and integrated threat intelligence feeds can help pinpoint the exact type of threat happening at any moment.
● Forensic Examination
Certain security tools, such as firewalls, do not have the capacity to provide enough information to help the security team conduct investigations. On the other hand, SIEMs allow organizations to go back to past events and analyze what led to such threats and what could be done to prevent future occurrences.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, SIEMs have become a prominent protocol or tool in combating many cyber threats in many organizations. It is often chosen because it can do many things simultaneously, and there’s no room for a passive response to threats. It combines processes such as log management, event correlation, and incident monitoring and response to provide an advanced security system for an organization.
Hence, certain reasons make SIEMs an excellent tool for many organizations. Some of the reasons include recognizing threats in real-time, preventing insider threats, room for forensic analysis, data retention and compliance management, and many others.