SIEM Solutions: An Overview

What Is SIEM?

Security information and event management, SIEM for short, is a set of tools and services that combine security events management (SEM) with security information management (SIM) skills to give analysts the ability to examine log and event data, comprehend threats, get ready for them, and retrieve and report on log data.

Simply said, SIEM is a tool that enables businesses to identify, assess, and react to security threats before they have a negative impact on daily operations. For compliance or auditing needs, it provides real-time event monitoring, analysis, and logging in addition to tracking and logging security data.

How Does SEIM Operate?

A SIEM operates on a relatively straightforward principle: it collects data on security events from numerous devices, systems, and networks then it gathers and normalizes the data. The data is then thoroughly examined to find security issues. Finally, the system identifies security issues, giving the IT team the chance to look into them.

However, according to analysts, the SIEM industry has grown more recently due to the enterprise’s need for stronger security measures. This is the reason managed SIEM has become more popular. Many IT departments lack the time to adequately extract the data from a SIEM that would enable them to identify cyber risks.

By monitoring a SIEM, a managed SIEM forensics team will find any activity that may indicate a threat to the firm. The Managed SIEM team will evaluate the threat’s viability and start the remediation process. Based on the SIEM’s fine-tuning, they generate a lot of alarms. With a team of analysts keeping an eye on a SIEM around the clock, they have the knowledge to decide on an alert’s importance.

Types of SIEM Solutions

a. In-house SIEM

In this configuration, the company has complete control over its SIEM system. They spend money on the necessary hardware and software to put this solution into practice at their actual location. As a matter of course, a SIEM is integrated into a company’s security operations center (SOC). This internal SIEM can be tailored by an organization to fit its security requirements and can be updated as needed.

However, no other parties are involved, and all security-related data is kept inside. The organization is now exclusively in charge of setting up an internal SIEM configuration, integrating it with current systems, defining log sources, personalizing alerts, and educating staff. In-house SIEM solutions demand a significant upfront investment and ongoing expenses for patches, upgrades, and maintenance.

b. Cloud-based SIEM

With the widespread deployment of cloud computing technology, this mode has significantly increased in popularity. The maintenance of hardware is minimal with cloud-based SIEM solutions because they are subscription-based. Organizations are forced to choose monthly or yearly subscriptions rather than making a sizable upfront investment. There is no reliance on outside parties, and customers can choose how their organization will deploy SIEM. The availability of an organization’s security data in places that it does not directly own or control is the trade-off in this situation. However, enterprises at times are unable to fully leverage the capabilities of SIEM solutions in this model.

c. Managed SIEM

This strategy can comprise the construction of a SIEM on-premises or in the cloud, but only with the assistance of the service provider’s requisite skills. Customers do not have to completely rely on their own security team because the provider will offer assistance throughout implementation. A managed SIEM solution monitors the client network for potential security vulnerabilities on the vendor’s server. Faster deployment, little maintenance, adaptable pricing choices, and the availability of SIEM professionals on call are the key benefits of managed SIEM solutions.

Advantages of SIEM Systems

Faster, more efficient Security Operations: With a SIEM sifting through millions of data points, SOC analysts may swiftly assess the situation by utilizing analysis templates to fast examine log and threat intelligence data when employing a SIEM, which significantly reduces the harmful impact of a cyberattack.

More accurate threat detection and security alerting: Individual security data streams would not be able to detect and identify threats as effectively as SIEM systems can using their huge data sets. They can also add valuable context to issue alerts and improve security event data. For instance, a SIEM can link a threat found on one log and a threat signature found in another log.

Improved security data: SIEMs consolidate security data, enhancing its capacity for analysis and application in processes for responding to incidents. Additionally, this may lead to increased enterprise-wide security landscape visibility. Additionally, the SIEM often normalizes security. The numerous data streams entering the SIEM have distinct schemas and fields in their raw form.

Better network visibility: SIEM log management and aggregation facilitates obtaining an overview of the network. In fact, “blank spaces” can easily exist in a network due to the complexity and diversity of the modern network. As a result, network management and security become less aware of what is actually happening with databases, servers, devices, and third parties as the network grows. On networks, hackers search for unlit areas. It provides them with a location to evade detection while moving laterally across digital assets and disguising persistent attacks.

Improved compliance: Security data recording is always a crucial control required by laws and regulatory frameworks like HIPAA. This function is carried out by SIEM systems, which facilitate attestation through pre-set compliance reporting templates that speed up the compliance process.

Limitations of SIEM systems

Most businesses that struggle with SIEM systems have issues with a handful of the technology’s well-known flaws.

Cost: SIEM systems can be rather expensive. However, the advantages may still outweigh the disadvantages to produce a profitable return on investment.

The Effort to configure: SIEM systems almost always need costly external resources to install and configure, and it can take a long time, too. Organizational and financial difficulties might result from a sluggish time to value.

Dedicated security resources for monitoring: Once up and running, SIEM systems require dedicated personnel for operations and continuous fine-tuning. If the SIEM system is ignored for updating for some time, it starts generating excessive alerts and becomes noisy. In this case, SOC starts ignoring the alerts.

Features of next-gen SIEM solution

Big data infrastructure with unlimited scalability

Platforms like Hadoop and Mongo did not exist in the past when classic SIEMs controlled the market. A scalable big data architecture is needed since a SIEM platform processes and collects a lot of data for multiple clients. A massively parallelized architecture that supports Log sign SIEM is continuously operational with no performance reduction.

Unlimited log collection and quick ingestion of log data

A SIEM solution should, in theory, gather information from all sources and analyze it for correlation and analysis. Data sources typically include the cloud, the network, logs, etc. A single point of control for data management should be supported by your SIEM.

Explore and Visualize

Built-in dashboards must encourage exploration and visualization of your network flow data the moment you process events. To acquire a deeper understanding of your data, try going down and setting up some filters.

Early detection and threat hunting

You should anticipate that your SIEM solution will offer a high level of enrichment once your data has been acquired to get usable results from the data obtained. For example,

Correlation of user and machine types with activity logs

Asset ownership tracking

Association of IP addresses with machines, users, and timelines

Dynamic grouping of peers

Conclusion:

SIEM systems could be very beneficial additions to a SOC. By combining security data flows, they may quickly identify major security issues and take appropriate action. The SOC team is then able to respond quickly and effectively. However, starting a SIEM project requires a significant time and resource commitment from the security team. To ensure long-term success, it should be carried out with meticulous preparation and reasonable spending.

References

https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/siem/https://hackcontrol.org/blog/siem-solutions-protect-company/

https://www.peerspot.com/articles/the-top-5-benefits-of-siem