We live in a time with continuous technological advancements. Physical security and security personnel are not as important or helpful anymore when it comes to protecting data. That is why strong cybersecurity measures have become crucial for organizations. If you do not have good cyber security for your organization, your company’s data is highly prone to breaches and attacks.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is a set of tools that provides you with the ability to gain a comprehensive view of your company’s information security. It also offers a proper insight into your company’s security data and helps with security event and information management by providing you with a centralized platform.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM tools) are a combination of two different technologies;

Security Event Management (SEM) is a technology that helps conduct real-time monitoring and instantly notifies the admins if there are any issues with the security events.

Security Information Management (SIM) is a technology constantly collecting data on the backend, usually from log files. With the help of this log data, analysis can be conducted, which can help us find out more about security events and security threats.

SIEM tools can prove to be a great addition to your organization if you value your cybersecurity. An SIEM offers a large variety of tools and features which can help you increase your threat detection and incident response.

Moreover, SIEM software provides a good real-time view of your company’s environment. It provides you with proper security analytics with the power to analyze and understand your data, whether on the cloud or the premise. It also provides you with the option to conduct a historical analysis.

How Do SIEM Technologies Work?

SIEM technology helps aggregate event data within your organization’s network through different devices and clouds. SIEM technology provides you with an amalgamated view of your organization. This is helpful for organizations wanting to gain a better understanding and get a better real-time view of what is going on with their assets and data.

These systems analyze all of the data gathered through various data sources to perform proper threat detection and point out potential threats your organization has identified.

Security Information Management

As mentioned above, there are multiple different sources through which SIEM tools collect data. These sources help it perform advanced analytics and security monitoring. Due to advanced AI and machine learning, newer SIEM softwares have strong security tools. These tools can identify even the smallest of errors, and these softwares can identify and solve the problem altogether. Some of these data sources are:

Network Devices

They are all around us, in our houses and offices, such as; routers, line drivers, hubs, and wireless access points.

Servers

Servers are all around us, whether in our homes or offices. Offices most commonly connect their computer systems to a single server to ease file sharing and data transfer.

Security Devices

Many security devices provide data to SIEM software, such as firewalls in our computers and even antivirus software, all data sources.

Cloud

The cloud contains data from several devices. This includes all the devices that are not present on the premises.

Security Events

Some of the main components analyzed in the data can be events, users, user actions, and IP addresses. Taking these components into account, SIEM tools will analyze even the most minuscule data we would normally not pay attention to. This includes failed login attempts or potential malware alerts, which we often ignore on our computers.

When SIEM software discovers such deviations, it considers these minor faults in the data as security events. It sends security alerts to the security analysts or works on suspending these problems by itself.

Through machine learning, many SIEM softwares can pick up on patterns of unordinary behavior, so if one or two security alerts do not raise a red flag. The SIEM software will eventually analyze the behavior pattern of a certain issue, and if it repeats multiple times, the issue will eventually be resolved.

The Process Of Security, Information, And Event Management Systems

The process of security and information and event management can be broken down into four main steps:

Data Collection

The whole process begins with data collection or security information management. In this phase, all the data from an organization is collected from different places. A modern SIEM tool usually uses agents to collect data from enterprises who then filter it and then send the data back to SIEM software. However, if you want the data to be unfiltered, then there are some sites, such as Splunk, which can allow you to receive the data unfiltered.

Policies

In this phase, the SIEM administrator creates a profile in which they define the behavior of the enterprise systems and operating systems. This behavior can be defined in normal conditions or predetermined security incidents.

While making a new profile, many top SIEM tools provide you with the ability to customize a lot of things, such as alerts, reports, and dashboards. This helps you customize each and every minuscule detail according to what best fits your organization’s security needs. Moreover, this ability to customize every detail can help you set personalized responses for specific security events.

Data Consolidation And Correlation

The main purpose of SIEMs is to pull together all the collected data and make log data aggregation possible, along with event management across all enterprise systems.

Multiple data points are brought together to create meaningful security events. This helps SIEMs advance threat detection capabilities. A very relatable example of this data correlation can be that when the site detects an error message, it can be correlated with many things, including failed login attempts and an app blocked by the firewall.

Newer Security Information and Event Management site solution software are slowly becoming very advanced with their security systems and security controls so that they can easily identify real security-related events and which events pose no threats.

Notifications

Suppose the threat intelligence feeds detect any issue or an event that triggers the SIEM tool correlation rules. In that case, the system reports the issue to the security management staff by the security alerts generated by the SIEM tool.

Key Feature Of SIEMs And Their Capabilities

There are multiple benefits to having Security Information and Event Management technology, such as;

Alerting

SIEM technology has some fast-paced and thorough alerting tools. After completing its in-depth analysis of event data, the SIEM solution reports anything that it considers out of the ordinary to the security team members. This alerting can be done in different ways, such as providing alerts through emails, other messaging services, or security dashboards.

Compliance

Another great benefit of SIEM technology is that it helps automate the process of gathering compliance data. It uses that to make reports that have the ability to adapt to processes such as auditing processes and security governance.

Threat Hunting

SIEM technology allows the security staff to manually analyze the collected security data. The team can then filter it according to their needs so that they can identify potential threats or vulnerabilities. Threat hunting is very useful for companies and organizations constantly at risk of cyber attacks or data breaches.

Retention

This technology can store large amounts of data for very long periods so that they can be analyzed later on in the future. This feature is useful as it comes in handy for forensic investigations, which can take place long after the data has been stored.

Dashboards And Visualizations

SIEMs have another very useful ability, which is that it creates visualizations. Security teams can use these visualizations to analyze the event data and patterns to conclude which activity does not follow the set standard.

Incident response

This feature allows security teams to stay in sync with each other when a threat is detected. Knowledge sharing and case management are very crucial in helping respond to the threats It allows different security teams to communicate with each other and come together to deal with the threat that has been identified.

SOC Automation

This is a key feature for SIEMs, as it helps security teams pre-define automated playbooks and workflows, which should be used automatically when a specific event occurs. This feature relies heavily on machine learning and AI detection. With the newer SIEM solutions being much stronger in this field, you can expect this to be done faster.

Where Are SIEM Softwares Used?

As mentioned above, these softwares are used in multiple places. They can be very helpful to some niche organizations or when used in a specific context because of their vast amount of operational capabilities.

Many people believe that SIEM technology is only for specific types of organizations. However, that is not true because SIEMs can be used in multiple different types of situations and organizations. Some of the uses of SIEMs can be:

Security Monitoring

SIEMs are beneficial for organizations that want real-time monitoring of their organizational systems and system data for potential security incidents.

SIEMs provide us with an in-depth understanding of security events. It uses multiple different data sources while also using complex threat identification to help us get a better understanding of the security events taking place around us.

Moreover, it helps security teams focus and save time on security incidents through alerts while also filtering out the security events that aren’t a significant threat.

Advanced Threat Detection Capabilities

SIEMs can help detect and eliminate almost any type of security breach, such as:

Data Exfiltration

Data exfiltration is when large amounts of sensitive and important company data are transferred outside the company. A SIEM tool, however, can easily prevent this from happening due to its vast knowledge of machine learning and AI technology SIEMs can pick up on data transfers that may seem suspicious.

Forensic Investigations And Incident Response

SIEMs have the ability to help security operations staff identify security incidents taking place while also providing you with an immediate solution on what steps are necessary to take in order to avoid the security incident next time and how to fix it.

Moreover, when the security staff discovers a historical security threat or needs to investigate it, they can use forensic data to help uncover the issue and resolve it.

Compliance Reporting And Auditing

SIEMs can be very useful for organizations trying to prove to auditors and regulators that they have taken proper security measures to help avoid any security incidents.

What Is The Best Solution?

Once you have developed a basic understanding of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), you are left with one question; “Which SIEM software is the best one in the market?”

The answer to that question depends totally on your own needs and what you are looking for. You can only decide once you have considered the volume of data you will be using or your budget for an average solution. It is important to pick the right site for your organization as security is a very important part of any organization. Therefore, you should pick an item according to your use.

SIEM solutions are used in multiple places, as they can benefit many different types of organizations. SIEM software can be used for forensic investigations and even compliance reporting and auditing

Due to SIEM technology being heavily integrated with machine learning, it can come in handy when choosing what event to ignore and consider a false alarm. This can also be useful in forensic investigation, allowing you to review older data. This can be very useful if you are investigating an incident of the past.

Endnote And Key Takeaways

In conclusion, as more businesses continue to shift their data to digital platforms, the need for cyber security and centralized management increases. This is where having a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tool is important for your organization.

SIEM technology provides real-time protection and a comprehensive overview of your organization’s security throughout its entire infrastructure. Moreover, SIEM software, through its threat detection feature, identifies security events and notifies your security staff right away.

Furthermore, newer sites are becoming increasingly smart, as their machine learning is getting very advanced along with their AI technology. This can be very helpful as it helps SIEMs gain the ability to differentiate a false alarm from a ‘REAL’ threat.

The process in which SIEMs operate is quite simple, as mentioned above. When considering buying an ideal solution for your organization, it is always important to look for something that suits your needs and will benefit your organization in the long term. It is important to have a simple solution that provides you proper real-time response to security threats.