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Every SIEM system operates under the principle of gathering relevant data from various sources and aggregating it together for analysis while monitoring deviations from norms and taking appropriate actions when necessary.
If a potential problem is detected, for instance, SIEM systems might store additional information, issue an alert and instruct other security controls as to how best to stop its activities.
Large organizations initially adopted SIEM to comply with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards; however, concerns over persistent threats have also caused smaller organizations to evaluate its benefits.
With one central place where Amounts of security data can be seen at once, organizations can easily spot unusual patterns.
Pre-processing may be performed at edge collectors, and only select events are passed to a central management node for further processing, thus reducing data storage and transmission needs.
While machine learning helps systems detect anomalies more precisely, analysts should provide feedback and educate their plans on their surroundings.
What Is The SIEM System?
SIEM programmes gather event and log data produced by host systems throughout the full infrastructure of an organisation, then combine this data on a single centralised platform.
Host systems could include firewalls, antivirus software filters, security devices, and windows applications. SIEM security tools then sort and identify this data into categories such as successful and unsuccessful login attempts, malware activity monitoring activities, or any likely malicious behaviors that arise in response.
SIEM software generates analysis of security alerts whenever it detects possible advanced security threats, which can be prioritized according to predefined rules within an organization.
An account with 25 failed login attempts within 25 minutes may be flagged for review; however, its priority should remain low as it's likely that this user had forgotten their login details. Accounts that experience 130 failed login attempts within five minutes will be given high priority, which indicates an active brute force attack is in progress.
Why Is SIEM So Important?
SIEM helps enterprises manage their comprehensive security programme by filtering large volumes of security-related data and prioritizing any software-generated alerts.
SIEM software enables organizations to detect incidents that would otherwise go undetected by analyzing log entries to see signs of malicious behavior and recreating an attack timeline by gathering events from multiple sources on their network. This allows an organization to understand what type of attack occurred and its effect on them and their business.
SIEM software can assist an organization with meeting compliance requirements by automatically creating reports highlighting all of the security events logged from various sources, rather than having to collect log data and manually compile reports themselves.
Organizations must manually collect log data without SIEM software before compiling reports for compliance requirements.
SIEM systems can aid incident management by helping security teams identify attack routes across networks, identify compromised sources, and provide automated assessment tools to prevent attacks.
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SIEM: Benefits and Uses
SIEM can provide many advantages, including:
- Timely identification of threats has been reduced, minimizing their damage potential.
- SIEM gives organizations a holistic overview of their information security environment, making collecting and analyzing security data simple and quick to ensure safe systems. An organization's data is stored centrally so it can easily be accessed or retrieved at any time.
- SIEM can help businesses with many applications, including cybersecurity programs, auditing, compliance reporting, help desk support, and network troubleshooting.
- SIEM can handle large volumes of data, enabling organizations to keep adding information. Furthermore, this threat detection system also provides security alerts.
- This technology can conduct in-depth forensic analyses during significant security breaches.
SIEM Limitations
SIEM does have some limitations despite its many benefits.
- Implementation of Advanced SIEM can be time-consuming as it requires support to integrate with an organization's security controls and hosts appropriately. Installation could take up to 90 days until it starts functioning normally.
- SIEM investments can cost hundreds of thousands, while associated expenses include staff costs to monitor and manage a SIEM system, annual support costs, and any software or agents used to collect data.
- Experts must be available to analyze, configure and integrate reports. Some SIEM systems can be managed centrally through a security operations center staffed with information security experts that address security concerns within an organization.
- SIEM tools rely on rules to analyze all recorded data. A company's network can generate thousands of alerts daily, making it hard to pinpoint potential cyber threats among all the irrelevant logs.
Features and Capabilities of SIEM
Consider these features when assessing SIEMs:
- Data Aggregation: Data collected from application servers, databases, networks, and applications will be combined and aggregated.
- Correlation: The correlation tool is an integral component of SIEM designed to identify similar attributes across events.
- Dashboards: Data from applications, databases, and networks is aggregated and displayed visually to find patterns or recognize essential events that may go undetected.
- Alerting: SIEM tools can inform users if a security incident has been detected.
- Automation: Some SIEM programs may also feature automated functions like incident response and security incident analysis.
When assessing SIEM products, be sure to ask yourself these questions:
- Integration of Controls Esc commands be sent to other enterprise security controls to mitigate or stop attacks?
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): Does the system possess the capacity to improve its accuracy through machine or deep learning techniques?
- Threat Intelligence Feeds: Can the system support feeds chosen by an organization, or does it only support specific ones?
- Comprehensive compliance reporting: Does it include pre-built compliance reports to meet standard compliance requirements while permitting organizations to customize new notifications?
- Forensic Capabilities: Can additional information regarding security events be gained by recording headers and packet content?
SIEM Tools
SIEMs have become a critical component of cybersecurity, yet not all SIEMs are created equal. When selecting one to use, keep this in mind: the decision should not be seen as a standalone solution but as part of an overall security strategy; here are some of the top SIEM solutions below.
Information on SIEM capabilities and drawbacks was obtained from Insights and publicly accessible sources.
Splunk
Splunk is an increasingly popular SIEM solution.
Splunk stands out by being capable of security, application, and network monitoring simultaneously - making it popular with IT operations staff and security personnel. Like many top SIEM solutions, Splunk's SIEM delivers real-time information in an intuitive, user-friendly format; pricing depends upon workload protection needs.
Splunk Enterprise Security lacks advanced behavioral analytics and automated capabilities, making detecting advanced threats and techniques such as lateral movement challenging.
Due to these constraints, users report difficulties using it "out-of-box," as it requires significant customization; to detect lateral movements requires running many custom queries, which could result in false positives; furthermore, they reported issues regarding integration between products such as SIEM SOAR UEBA.
LogRhythm
LogRhythm has earned itself a stellar reputation as an innovative SIEM solution. LogRhythm offers numerous analytical tools, such as AI and log correlation.
Implementation is generally straightforward, but there may be an initial learning curve as the interface may not be as intuitive.
LogRhythm does not automatically detect all lateral movements within your network; analysts must manually combine timelines to see account switches.
This may prove problematic as attackers often move laterally when searching for valuable assets or information. LogRhythm relies heavily on indicators (IOCs) but does not detect advanced threats.
IBM QRadar
SIEM IBM's QRadar allows for real-time monitoring of IT infrastructures live. With its modular design, QRadar can detect threats quickly and prioritize them accordingly, offering numerous configuration options and high-end analytics features and accessing content from IBM or third-party sources via its app store.
IBM QRadar does have some drawbacks, including its high price and complex pricing model, lack of collaboration tools such as chat, asset management is currently limited in QRadar, and limited UEBA capabilities are an integral component of next-gen SIEM solutions.
Upgrades can be complex and labor-intensive in distributed environments, with limited product support (you may be able to upgrade this) and limited reporting capabilities, requiring enhancement by externally developed scripts.
Microsoft Azure Sentinel
Microsoft Azure Sentinel, released in late 2023 as a SIEM solution, is relatively new. It has quickly gained favor among customers looking to consolidate existing Microsoft additional security investments and IT into one platform.
With an innovative licensing model that fits SMB budget needs as well as large enterprise requirements, Azure Sentinel's data onboarding feature has proven popular with both groups.
Azure Sentinel does have some significant drawbacks. The SIEMs are optimized for Microsoft, lacking as many integrations with 3rd parties as other leading SIEMs do, making them less suitable for companies using non-Microsoft products and security analysts unfamiliar with Microsoft data sources who face a steep learning curve when using this solution.
Securonix
Analyst firms have awarded Securonix high rankings for its SIEM solution. This platform boasts next-generation SIEM capabilities with analytics-driven UEBA capabilities; AWS and Snowflake deployment partners are advertised.
Furthermore, Securonix provides "Premium Apps," which enable customers to buy vertical-specific content such as aerospace analytics or fraud investigations in addition to standard rules and models; such packages may include aerospace analytics packages or fraud investigations packages.
Customers should remember that Securonix does not possess a native SOAR engine; in the past, they white-labeled CyberSponse's SOLAR engine.
Securonix advertises SOAR, but this component lacks many features integrated by other SIEM vendors into their security orchestration platforms. Securonix offers lower standard licensing packages than competitors.
McAfee Enterprise Security Management
McAfee Enterprise Security Manager allows you to perform advanced threat detection, manage compliance activity and create real-time reports in real-time.
It features an intuitive user interface for emergencies. It can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or as needed based on data requirements.
McAfee Enterprise Security Manager collects logs from multiple sources, which can significantly increase network and application traffic.
One reported issue is with the system's logging reducing records to essential contexts and necessitating recollecting of logs for viewing purposes. McAfee users have repeatedly complained of slow performance. Updates often disrupt continuity, while pop-up alerts disrupt system prompts.
LogPoint
LogPoint is a SIEM that simplifies application event monitoring and security improvement. Highly scalable, LogPoint covers most monitoring and security use cases - from monitoring one server up to thousands.
Depending on your needs.
LogPoint can be applied across environments - production, development, and testing. Log analysis provides storage, searching, filtering, and error-tracing capabilities.
Reports based on these log analyses allow faster security incident identification. LogPoint's user interface can be complex, and some features are difficult to locate; alert rules can be found under the Knowledge Base menu under Settings in LogPoint.
setup may also present users with challenges; its flexible query language has a steep learning curve and may be hard to use, and information may not always be readily available or easily managed - rendering UEBA setup less suitable for organizations without highly trained technical staff.
Elastic Stack
Elastic's ELK stack, used as a monitoring and log management software tool, includes Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana to meet a range of monitoring and log management needs.
Elasticsearch lets you search and filter logs based on your criteria. At the same time, Logstash generates logs all at once Kibana helps visualize statistics using graphs, charts, and graphs.
These open-source tools enable efficient application monitoring and management. The ELK stack logs applications centrally to find potential security issues and fix them quicker, as well as ensure applications are performing as intended.
It enables companies to recognize IT problems early so challenges for the security team can take immediate steps.
ELK does have some drawbacks, including difficulty managing and setting up projects with its multiplex architecture and lack of third-party integration tool support.
ELK also lacks documentation, and debugging is difficult - learning its use requires significant expertise and trial and error.
ArcSight Enterprise Security Management Software
ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager has earned itself a solid reputation for being user-friendly and straightforward in installation and upkeep.
He provides many options if you invest the time and resources in creating tools. ArcSight features such as correlation, triggers, and normalization will satisfy even your most authoritarian security measures.
ArcSight can be slow to deploy large environments and may take an extended period to retrieve logs, making the backend complex and necessitating professional SIEM engineers for maintenance, especially if your goal is to create meaningful categories of events.
InsightIDR
InsightIDR comes equipped with pre-built triggers, alerts, and capabilities, consolidating disparate data sources into a central repository to simplify security analysts' lives.
Though offering on-premise log collectors and cloud forward comprehensive strategy is the main goal for InsightIDR.
Searching raw logs with InsightIDR can be tedious and time-consuming, forcing teams to rely on log reviews performed directly on hosts in order to speed up discovery.
Furthermore, its incident management interface is not user-friendly, making gathering details specific to security incidents in context challenging.
InsightIDR also lacks integrations; its compatibility is limited to Rapid7 products and select third-party vendors - this flies in the face of its primary purpose - as a central repository for security information within an organization.
Read more: Utilizing Security Information and Event Management Solutions
How To Choose A SIEM Provider
All the SIEM solutions we have outlined are comprehensive and offer something for a range of users. When selecting a SIEM solution, please consider its vendor, market reputation, and functionality requirements.
Here we outline the core capabilities and next-generation features of SIEMs that add intelligence and network automation tools for better performance.
The ideal SIEM software will cover core capabilities as well as advanced features explicitly tailored to your organization's security needs.
Core SIEM Capabilities
- Threat Detection: SIEMs can accurately detect threats using rules and behavioral analytics. They aggregate threat feeds and geolocation, backlist, and other relevant data sources for further evaluation.
- Security Alerting and Threat Intelligence: SIEMs provide your security system access to threat intelligence feeds that inform your business on cyber attacks. SIEMs aggregate and normalize security data gathered from various sources to assess system activity.
- Compliance Assessment and Reporting: Compliance can be one of the biggest hurdles to any business's growth, becoming ever more complicated as time passes. FFIEC, HIPAA, and PCI regulations governing data storage requirements define what and how your data should be stored; failing to meet them could have catastrophic repercussions for an organization. SIEMs offer compliance reporting tools that allow your organization to assess how well it's meeting the legal regulations that dictate data storage needs.
- Timely Notifications: Security information and event management (SIEMs) alert you immediately of any security breaches, giving you time to react quickly against potential threats.
- Data Aggregation: Centralizing information from multiple sources and providing a clear view of your network activities is one of the SIEM's core features. As your business expands, it could become easy to miss dark corners within your network that require attention; cybercriminals could take advantage of this lack of visibility to gain entry undetected into your system and cause untold harm.
- SIEM Normalization: Your security system consists of vast amounts of data coming from various sources, which must all be formatted consistently. Hence, it is easier to analyze and draw meaningful conclusions from this information. SIEM normalizes security data to make analysis faster and facilitate more meaningful conclusions being drawn from research.
Next-Gen SIEM Capabilities
- Data Collection and Management: Next-Gen SIEMs have the capability of collecting and managing data from all sources. Integration is made more straightforward thanks to built-in connectors; cloud resources and services, log data on-premises, and network data are among these vital sources of information.
- Cloud Delivery: Cloud SIEMs use elastic cloud storage, making them much more scalable than on-premise SIEMs that rely on outdated equipment incapable of processing large volumes of data generated in large enterprises.
- User Entity Behavior Analysis (UEBA): sets a baseline of expected user behaviors and then uses machine learning algorithms to detect anomalous ones. Modern SIEMs use this technology to detect zero-day threats or insider attacks that don't match known attack signatures.
- Security Orchestration and Automation Response: (SOAR) allows SIEMs to respond more rapidly to security incidents instead of just monitoring and alerting. Next-gen SIEMs will collaborate closely with IT infrastructure and security personnel, suggesting relevant actions as soon as they emerge.
They can automate threat response using IR Playbooks, orchestrate threat detection/response tools across multiple systems, manage security devices like firewalls/email servers/access controls, etc., and automate threat responses using automated response playbooks.
IR playbooks can even orchestrate using multiple detection/response tools used by various systems simultaneously, allowing real-time detection/response systems like this allows real-time responses rather than just monitoring/alerting from within SIEMs/CE.
- Automated Attack Timelines: Traditional SIEMs require analysts to compile information from various sources to form a timeline for an attack, taking considerable time and expertise. Newer SIEMs offer automated attack timeline creation that can then be visually presented for analysts who may not possess as much expertise, making incident triage much quicker.
What Is The Best SIEM Product?
Finding the appropriate SIEM tool depends on many variables, including an organization's security posture and budget.
Companies should seek SIEMs that offer features such as these:
- Compliance Reporting, Incident Response, and Forensic Analysis.
- Monitoring database and server access.
- Internal and external threats detection.
- Real-time threat detection, correlation, and analysis across various applications and systems.
- An intrusion detection system (IPS), firewall, event log, and other applications and system integrations.
- Threat intelligence and activity monitoring of user activities are among those technologies which form part of an overall security framework.
Implementing SIEM: Best Practices
Make use of these best practices when implementing SIEM.
- Set clear and measurable goals: Select and implement the SIEM tool according to your organization's security goals, compliance regulations, and threat landscape.
- Implement data correlation rules: Apply data correlative rules across all systems, networks, and cloud deployments to quickly locate any data which contains errors.
- Establish your compliance requirements: By doing this, you can ensure that the SIEM software chosen can monitor compliance standards and produce reports.
- Listing Digital Data: Recording digital information helps an IT infrastructure manage log data and monitor network activity.
- Document incident response plans and workflows: Ensure teams can respond swiftly in case of security incidents.
- Appoint a SIEM administrator: An SIEM administrator is accountable for properly maintaining and operating a SIEM installation.
History of SIEM
SIEM technology has been around since the early, initially as log management. Log management encompasses processes and policies designed to manage log generation, transmission, analysis and storage, archiving, and disposal for information systems with large log volumes.
analysts first introduced SEM in their Report entitled, "Improve It Security with Vulnerability Management," proposing an integrated security information system utilizing SIM, SEM, and other technologies.
SIM is a log management system that utilizes legacy systems to collect logs. It then offers long-term storage, analysis, and reporting on this data.
Furthermore, SIM integrates records and threat intelligence. At the same time, Security Event Monitoring focuses on detecting, gathering, monitoring, reporting, and documenting security events occurring in software, IT infrastructure, or systems.
Vendors combined SIM with SEM to form SIEM. SIM collects, analyses, and reports log data while SEM processes it further.
SIEM has evolved into an advanced and comprehensive tool. To reduce risk within an organization, new tools, such as machine learning and AI, have been added to help systems identify anomalies with accuracy.
SIEM products that featured such advanced features were later dubbed next-generation SIEM products.
Future of SIEM
Future SIEM trends include:
- Better Orchestration at present, SIEM only provides basic workflow automation capabilities. As organizations continue to grow and thrive, more abilities will become necessary from SIEM tools; AI and machine learning should enable faster orchestration as an ongoing protection level across all departments within an enterprise company. Furthermore, security protocols implemented using these AI/ML techniques will become more effective, efficient, and faster in their execution.
- Increased Collaboration Through Managed Detection and Reaction (MDR) with hacking, unauthorized access, and other security threats becoming ever more threatening to organizations, a multi-tiered approach must be implemented to detect and analyze security threats. While IT teams of companies can implement SIEM independently, managed service providers can implement MDR.
- Improved cloud management, monitoring, and SIEM tools.
- SIEM will become an all-in-one solution, prompting SOAR vendors to enhance the capabilities of their SOAR products in response.
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Conclusion
Understanding available cybersecurity tools has never been more essential, with cyberattacks becoming more frequent and high-profile than ever.
Regarding security reports, data volume versus practicality often reigns supreme - you don't want to miss any security events, while managing all alerts in your security infrastructure is almost impossible.
