Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
What is SIEM?
Security information and event management (SIEM) software gives enterprise security professionals insights into the activities within their IT environment. It provides a comprehensive and centralized view of the security posture of an IT infrastructure.
How does SIEM work?
SIEM software collects and aggregates log data generated throughout the organization’s technology infrastructure, from host systems and applications to network and security devices such as firewalls and antivirus filters.
The software then identifies and categorizes incidents and events, as well as analyzes them. The software delivers on two main objectives, which are to:
- Provide reports on security-related incidents and events, such as successful and failed logins, malware activity and other possible malicious activities and
- Send alerts if analysis shows that an activity runs against predetermined rulesets and thus indicates a potential security issue.
SIEM Capabilities
The software allows security teams to gain attacker insights with threat rules derived from insight into attacker tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) and known indicators of compromise (IOC)s. To do this, it uses multiple threat intelligence feeds (organized and analyzed information on potential and current threats) which supplements threat detection.
Once SIEM software determines a threat, attack or suspicious behavior it creates alerts for an organization’s security teams for prompt response. Some versions of the software include workflow and case management to accelerate investigations using automatically generated step-by-step investigation instructions with searches and actions to perform. SIEM alerts can also be customized to fit user needs.
SIEM also supports compliance and alert reporting. It helps organizations to simplify compliance reporting with data dashboards to retain and organize event information and monitor privileged user access.
Why is using a SIEM solution important?
In the digital economy, organizations must monitor and guard their data to protect themselves from increasingly advanced cyber threats.
SIEM solutions enable companies to respond quickly and precisely to security incidents. A SIEM solution provides centralized collection, classification, detection, correlation, and analysis capabilities, making it easier for teams to monitor and troubleshoot IT infrastructure in real-time.
SIEM solutions can accelerate detection and response to cyber threats – making security analysts more efficient and accurate in their investigations.