What is Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) ?
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Security information and event management (SIEM) software supports threat detection and security incident response by collecting security log data from multiple sources to determine security threats. SIEM software helps organizations to assess their security posture, uncover security events and breaches, be alerted in real time of any changes that appear threatening and respond automatically to various threats, as well as providing a dashboard and access points to the SIEM applications.
Once bad activities are apprehended within an IT environment, SIEM tools give real-time security alerts to IT team to respond to any security threat.
10 Best SIEM Vendors & Solutions 2023 Ranked | SIEM Providers Tools List
Log360 SIEM solution is like your very own security guard in the world of IT. The manageengine log360 is a SIEM tool, always vigilant whether your data is stored locally, in the cloud, or both.
More than just a watchdog, it helps your organization stay on top of compliance rules, so you won’t have to worry about that either. And the best part? You can tweak Log360 to fit your unique needs.
ManageEngine Log360 SIEM Features:
Application and network device auditing
Forensic analysis
Real-time event correlation
Privileged user monitoring
AD change auditing
Threat intelligence
From gathering and analyzing logs in real-time to setting off alarms and keeping a record of everything, it’s got you covered. It even keeps an eye on all your tech – from your Active Directory, network gadgets, and staff computers, to file servers, Microsoft 365, and various cloud services.
SolarWinds Security Event Manager
MicroFocus ArcSight SIEM
DNIF Hyperscale SIEM
GreyLog SIEM
Splunk Enterprise Security SIEM
LoRhythm Next-Gen SIEM
IBM QRadar SIEM
Alien Vault Unified Security Management SIEM
Sumo Logic SIEM
What is SIEM Monitoring?
No business is immune to cyber-attacks. In fact, it takes 175 days, on average, to detect an attack. What can be done to lessen the attack dwell time?
Invest focus on SIEM monitoring best practices to get high-speed forensic analytical capability to apprehend log data to monitor attack pattern and impact. It goes without saying why threat hunters find suspicious connections or IP addresses in majority of ‘variants’ of cyber-attacks.
Although there are other security controls like firewalls, Intrusion Defence Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) etc. but they come with limitations. When it comes to prevention of zero-day attack , single security controls do not give sure-shot information, by themselves, to pin-point malicious activity in a network.
By employing SIEM real-time threat monitoring, by keeping tabs on robust logs and important system events, to automate remediation for rapid incident response is crucial to streamline business security.
Analysis of indicators of compromise (IOC) is only realized with robust collection of IOCs, from different sources, and then monitor events or security alerts in realtime.
What is SIEM Log Management?
Commonly known as event logs, audit record or audit travels, SIEM platforms need to examine log data to identity security-related issues. Importance of security log analysis revolves around getting important intelligence about network, security application, Operating Systems (OS) and servers etc which are vulnerable to cyber-attack.
With built-in log management feature, SIEM software collects, analyses, reports and incident detection and response. By piecing these together, a SIEM tool, with its log analytical capacity log data management features, can detect smallest of indictor of compromise.
SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management.
If security incident is identified and responded real-time, preventing cyber-attacks gains great fillip. Organizations need to detect such IT incidents and empower security teams to identity, analyse and respond to an attack’s route across the network.
In short, incident detection and real-time response efforts is the key.
How this can be done? Security Information and Event management software is the key to automated mechanisms to improve threat detection and response.
SIEM, pronounced as SIM (‘e’ being silent), tool is used for scanning and interpreting security event information. When ‘security information’ is mentioned, it relates to:
There are 2 important words in this SIEM tool. Security information and event management. To address these two, a SIEM solution is a combined software of 2 technologies:
Security information management (SIM)
which is responsible for security-related data collection from a plethora of log files and resources.
Security event management (SEM)
gives the capability to ‘manage’ by keeping an eye on incidents and IT-related problems.
Simple definition of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)?
As described above, a SIEM software is to automate aggregate data, from different sources and systems, and analyse that data to gather decision making ability to catch potential cyber-attacks.
Collects data from multiple sources like network devices, servers, domain controllers and more.
Step #2 – Data Aggregation
Normalize and aggregate collected data
Step #3 – Data Analysis
Analyze the data to discover and detect cyber threats
Step #4 – Incident Response
Pinpoint security breaches and enable organizations to investigate alerts.
Why is SIEM tool important?
With IT breaches making headlines daily, keeping digital threat actors at bay by real-time incident response makes the role of a security information and event management (SIEM) software vital.
Talking about SIEM benefits, insight for compliance reporting also helps an organization’s IT infrastructure or financial information. Acronyms like Log Management System (LMS), Security Event Management (SEM) and Security Information Management (SIM) provide digital clarity by extracting actionable information keep data security ecosystem safe from cyber attacks.
Visibility in real time
Data Consolidation
Correlation of Events
Realtime notification of automated Security events/alerts
9 Advantages of using SIEM Software Tools
Extending why is SIEM important, following advantages of SIEM Solutions might be helpful in understanding how SIEM tools help by collecting security log events from numerous hosts:
Incident handling activities
Attaining and maintaining compliance reporting
Zero-day threat detection
Advanced persistent threats
forensics investigation
Faster Security Operation (SecOps)
Improved Threat Detection and Security Alerting
Better Network Visibility
Improved Compliance
SIEM Tools comparison chart
How to choose best SIEM solutions features?
Answer of which is the best SIEM software tool depends on including security controls, operating systems, and applications in an organization.
6 Key SIEM Features for Advanced Threats Detection
1. Real-Time Log Data Collection
Everything starts from log data collection, from different sources across the network, to detect and respond to Indicators of Compromise (IoC). With SIEM log data management, forensic data analysis gets help.
2. Log Correlation & Threat Intelligence
A key feature of modern SIEM tools is log correlation. SIEM event log correlationaggregates log information data from network, applications, and devices and correlates to threat intelligent feeds. Advisable is to ask your SIEM vendor about threat intelligence feeds.
3. Real-Time Notification & Alerts
4. Improved Alert prioritization – Machine learning and AI (artificial intelligence)
5. Reporting & Dashboards – For MTTD and MTTR
6. Security Workflows
SIEM Tools FAQs
What is Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and why it is important?
Security Information and Event Management system helps monitoring and incidence response protocols to monitor potential issues and threats to make sure your business remains secure. It is also used for compliance purposes, especially if you have a Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification as well as for incident response because managers can review audit logs retrievable from SIEM software tools .
SIEM Vs SIM Vs SEM – What is the difference?
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) combines two related but separate functions, security information management and security event management, into one system to facilitate the faster identification, analysis and recovery of security events.
What are the benefits of SIEM tools?
A security information and event management (SIEM) system is essential for organizations, both small and large, because it offers real-time monitoring of events and tracks to prevent unauthorized access. SIEM tools log any security-related data for compliance or auditing purposes.
SIEM Benefit #1: Data aggregation visibility SIEM Benefit #2: SIEM helps enterprises patch their IT environments SIEM Benefit #3: Computer security incident detection SIEM Benefit #4: Compliance report SIEM Benefit #5: Threat Detection and Security Alerting
What is the difference between SIEM and a log management system?
Log management systems and SIEM solutions play vastly different roles in Information Security, even though both monitor information about data that flows through networks. However, log management is considered a primary tool for monitoring network events, troubleshooting and learning about trends from past events. SIEM on the other hand acts like the security brain of the enterprise – detecting suspicious activity, analyzing collected event data to identify offenders and mitigating threat propagation.
While many SIEM systems rely on log management , a log management system is designed primarily for collecting log data. An SIEM system, by contrast, is designed primarily to collect and manage security information related to devices on your network in order to be able to react accordingly depending on the kind of threats detected.
Team ZCySec strives to simplify complex cyber security concepts and provide practical tips and advice that readers can use to protect themselves against online threats. Whether it's through blog posts, white papers, or other types of content, our 'security awareness' team is committed to helping readers understand the importance of cyber security and how they can safeguard their digital lives.
