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What is SIEM?

Learn how security information and event management (SIEM) solutions support threat protection for organizations.
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Introduction to SIEM


One essential component of effective cybersecurity is a security information and event management (SIEM) solution. These types of solutions collect, aggregate, and analyze large volumes of data from organization-wide applications, devices, servers, and users in real time. By consolidating this vast array of data into a single, unified platform, SIEM solutions provide a comprehensive view of an organization's security posture, empowering security operation centers (SOC) to detect, investigate, and respond to security incidents swiftly and effectively. SIEM solutions can help organizations of all sizes:
 
  • Gain visibility into their security posture by centralizing and analyzing data from disparate sources.
  • Detect and identify potential security breaches and threats in real time, minimizing the risk of compromise.
  • Investigate and triage security incidents efficiently, reducing the time and resources required for resolution.
  • Comply with regulatory and industry-specific security standards and frameworks.
 

Key takeaways

  • SIEM solutions enhance threat detection and incident response by aggregating and analyzing data from various sources.
  • Centralized visibility and compliance management help security teams protect their organization from a growing attack surface.
  • The key components of a SIEM solution are log management, event correlation, continuous monitoring, and incident response.
  • Over time, SIEM solutions have incorporated AI and automation to improve security team efficiency and effectiveness.
  • SIEM solutions can also be integrated with other tools, like extended detection and response.

History and evolution of SIEM

As networks grew in the 1990s and more companies connected to the internet, firewalls became less effective at detecting and blocking threats. Security professionals needed a better way to gather, correlate, and prioritize alerts from various systems across the network. To address this need, security vendors combined security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM) to create SIEM solutions.
Early days of SIEM
The early iterations of SIEM solutions emerged in the early 2000s, primarily focusing on log management and compliance reporting. These solutions centralized alerts from across the network, saving SOCs valuable time, but, unfortunately, they weren’t very scalable. Security teams relied heavily on manual processes, making it difficult to correlate data effectively.

Evolution and advancements
As cyberthreats became more sophisticated, SIEM solutions evolved to include real-time monitoring, advanced analytics, and machine learning capabilities. This shift allowed organizations to detect anomalies and respond to threats faster than ever before.

Current state of SIEM technology
Today, SIEM solutions incorporate AI for cybersecurity and machine learning to enhance their analytical capabilities. Modern SIEM platforms not only provide security monitoring but also integrate with security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) solutions to help teams automate certain tasks and coordinate their response to incidents.

Key components of SIEM

A robust SIEM solution is built on several key components that work together to provide comprehensive security monitoring.

Log management
SIEM systems collect and analyze logs from across the entire organization, including servers, network devices, firewalls, other security solutions, and cloud applications. The goal of this data collection is to uncover anomalies that indicate a potential threat. Many SIEM solutions also ingest threat intelligence feeds, which allow security teams to identify and block emerging cyberthreats.

Event correlation
SIEM solutions are effective because they bring together data from multiple systems across an enterprise. They analyze that data and look for patterns across different entities. For example, if there’s evidence of a compromised account and also unusual network traffic, a SIEM might identify that these two events are related and generate an alert for security teams to further investigate. Event correlation helps detect activity that seems benign on its own, but when combined with other activity, can be an indicator of compromise.

Incident response and monitoring
To detect threats early and minimize damage, SIEM solutions monitor digital and on-premises systems continuously. Analysis is displayed in a central dashboard, and the SIEM solution will also send alerts to security analysts based on pre-defined rules.

Many SIEM solutions also include automated response capabilities. In certain instances, the SIEM can take action automatically based on rules defined by the SOC. For example, if the SIEM solution detects possible malware, it could take steps to isolate the infected system based on predefined rules. Automation helps accelerate response and frees up security analysts to focus on more complex tasks and issues.

How SIEM works

The key to an effective SIEM system is data. SIEM solutions continuously gather data from various sources, including firewalls, cloud apps, security systems, and endpoints. The aggregated data is then normalized to standard formats and parsed to extract relevant information. Using algorithms and correlation rules, the SIEM is able to identify patterns and anomalies in the normalized data and surface potential threats. A centralized dashboard and alerts help security analysts identify events that require further investigation.
BENEFITS

Benefits of SIEM

SIEM tools offer many benefits that can help strengthen an organization’s overall security posture.

Expanded visibility

With people working from anywhere and IT infrastructure spread across multiple clouds, there are now many more entryways for a bad actor to attack an organization. To protect their companies, security professionals need to monitor all those possible attack vectors, which is nearly impossible to do manually. A SIEM simplifies this by bringing data and insights from across the enterprise into a single portal.

Enhanced threat detection

Because threat actors often move across apps, devices, and users, it can be difficult to detect them. SIEM solutions help uncover these stealth attackers by aggregating, analyzing, and correlating data from across the entire environment. This helps SOCs quickly identify and respond to multidomain threats.

Improved SOC efficiency

A SIEM solution cuts down significantly on the amount of manual work in a modern SOC. Centralized dashboards and event correlation help teams pinpoint serious incidents quickly. Reports and SOAR integration make communication between security team members easier, allowing them to work together efficiently to respond to threats.

Centralized investigations

By unifying log files and other security data, a SIEM provides a single location for security analysts to conduct investigations into potential incidents. They can re-create past events and dig into new ones using analysis from across the entire organization.

Efficient response

Effective collaboration and comprehensive investigations make it easier for security teams to quickly respond to security incidents. Many SIEM solutions also offer AI-powered automation that can quickly address certain types of incidents, allowing humans to focus on more complex issues.

Regulatory compliance support

With real-time audits and reporting capabilities, a SIEM solution provides organizations with the necessary tools to meet regulatory compliance requirements, reducing the risk of penalties and reputational damage with customers and the community.

Keys to successful SIEM implementations

To get the most out of a SIEM solution, it’s important to carefully plan your implementation.

 
  1. Clearly outline what you want to achieve with the SIEM, such as compliance reporting, threat detection, or incident response and develop specific use cases tailored to your organization’s needs.
  2. Evaluate different SIEM solutions based on your requirements, scalability, budget and how well it will integrate with existing tools and technologies.
  3. Identify and prioritize data sources to feed into the SIEM and set up the necessary permissions to these data sources. It’s best to start with broad data collection and gradually refine it based on what’s most relevant.
  4. Standardize data formats from different sources to make it easier to analyze.
  5. Establish log retention and security policies based on regulatory requirements and organizational needs.
  6. Develop clear workflows for incident detection, analysis, and response.
  7. Determine which actions you want to automate and define clear rules and steps.
  8. Provide ongoing training for staff on how to use the SIEM solution effectively and understand its outputs.
  9. Regularly review and adjust rules, alerts, and dashboards based on evolving threats and organizational changes.
 

SIEM use cases

Security teams use SIEM solutions for a wide variety of applications.

Threat detection and response
The most common use case for a SIEM solution is threat detection and response. A SIEM can help a security team uncover and respond to even some of the most complex threats, such as insider threats, advanced persistent threats, and multidomain attacks.

Compliance management
SOCs often use a SIEM solution to help them stay compliant with regional regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union. Because a SIEM system automatically collects data from across the organization, it can help teams identify issues quickly. They can also use a SIEM to generate compliance reports tailored to specific regulations.

Forensic Analysis
To effectively respond to a security incident, SOCs need to understand the full scope of the attack, including motivations and tactics. A SIEM solution provides reporting and analysis to help teams determine the attack path and identify all the affected assets.

SIEM solutions

When choosing a SIEM solution, it’s important to consider scalability, ease of use, and integration capabilities. Many SIEM solutions, like Microsoft Sentinel, include built-in data connectors, so that organizations can integrate it with their existing apps and services. Microsoft Sentinel is also included in a unified SecOps platform that combines XDR. SOAR, and SIEM capabilities.
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Frequently asked questions

  • A SIEM is a platform that collects, aggregates, and analyzes security-related data from various sources within an organization's IT infrastructure. It provides a centralized view of security events and helps organizations detect, investigate, and respond to security incidents. A SOC is a team of security professionals who monitor and analyze security events, investigate security incidents, and respond to security threats. A SIEM is the technology used by a SOC to collect, analyze, and respond to security events.
  • No, a SIEM is not a firewall. A firewall is a network security device that controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on a set of rules. A SIEM collects, aggregates, and analyzes security-related data from various sources and helps organizations detect, investigate, and respond to security incidents.
  • A SIEM solution is security software that gives organizations a bird’s-eye-view of activity across their entire network so they can respond to threats faster—before business is disrupted.

    SIEM software, tools and services detect and block security threats with real-time analysis. They collect data from a range of sources, identify activity that deviates from the norm, and take appropriate action.
  • SIEM solutions have seen significant improvements in recent years due to advancements in technology and the evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats. Here are some key areas of enhancement:

     
    1. Enhanced analytics: Modern SIEMs use advanced analytics, including machine learning and AI, to detect anomalies and identify potential threats more accurately and quickly.
    2. Integration with cloud services: With the rise of cloud computing, SIEM solutions have improved their capabilities to collect and analyze data from various cloud environments, making them more versatile.
    3. Automation and orchestration: Many SIEMs now include automation features that streamline incident response processes, allowing for quicker mitigation of threats and reducing the manual workload for security teams.
    4. User behavior and entity analytics: Improved UEBA capabilities help organizations detect insider threats and account or device compromise by analyzing user and entity behavior patterns.
    5. Real-time monitoring: Enhanced real-time data collection and analysis allows organizations to respond to incidents as they happen, rather than after the fact.
    6. Scalability: SIEM solutions have become more scalable, accommodating the growing volume of data generated by organizations and ensuring they can handle increasing loads without sacrificing performance.
    7. Better reporting and compliance: Enhanced reporting features help organizations meet regulatory requirements more easily and provide clearer insights into security posture.
    8. Threat intelligence integration: Many SIEMs now integrate with threat intelligence feeds, providing contextual information about emerging threats and vulnerabilities.
    9. User-friendly interfaces: Modern SIEMs often come with more intuitive dashboards and user interfaces, making it easier for security teams to navigate and analyze data.
    10. Community and ecosystem collaboration: Greater collaboration among security vendors and the creation of ecosystems allow for better integration with other security tools, enhancing overall security operations.

      These advancements help organizations better detect, respond to, and manage security incidents, making SIEM a critical component of modern cybersecurity strategies.
     
  • SIEM and SOAR technologies both play significant roles in cybersecurity.

    Simply put, SIEM helps organizations make sense of the data collected from applications, devices, networks, and servers by identifying, categorizing, and analyzing incidents and events.

    SOAR stands for security orchestration, automation and response and describes software that addresses threat and vulnerability management, security incident response, and security operations (SecOps) automation.

    SOAR helps security teams prioritize threats and alerts created by SIEM by automating incident response workflows. It also helps find and resolve critical threats faster with extensive cross-domain automation. SOAR surfaces real threats from massive amounts of data and resolves incidents faster.
  • Extended detection and response, or XDR for short, is an emerging approach to cybersecurity to improve threat detection and response with deep context into specific resources.

    XDR platforms help:
    • Investigate attacks with understanding into specific resources, across platforms and clouds—unified across endpoints, users, applications, IoT, and cloud workloads.
    • Protect resources and harden posture to guard against threats like ransomware and phishing.
    • Respond to threats faster using auto-remediation.

    SIEM solutions provide a comprehensive SecOps command-and-control experience across the entire enterprise.

    SIEM platforms help:
    • Manage security operations from your bird's-eye view of the estate.
    • Collect and analyze data from your entire organization to detect, investigate, and respond to incidents that cross silos.
    • Enhance SecOps efficiency with customizable detections, analytics, and built-in automation.
       
    A strategy that includes both broad visibility across the entire digital estate and depth of knowledge into specific threats, combining SIEM and XDR solutions, helps SecOps teams overcome their daily challenges.

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