Understanding SIEM and Its Importance

Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) refers to all the processes involved in monitoring, identifying, analyzing, and recording security incidents and events in any network in real time. This is typically encapsulated in a comprehensive snapshot that any technical member of the organization can look at to understand its current comprehensive security status. SIEM software comprises security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM) that combine to offer a comprehensive and real-time analysis of all security alerts in the network that are sent by applications and network hardware. IT Support Vermont offers a variety of SIEM Solutions that are just right for local businesses.

The software essentially operates through matching security events with rules and analytics engines. It then indexes them for sub-second search to identify and analyze advanced threats using a database of globally gathered intelligence. The system enables administrators to have a bird’s eye view over system risks as well as a track record of all activities within their IT environment. SIEM systems are typically deployed in conjunction with other software, systems, and appliances in a network. A SIEM system is composed of several moving parts or steps. These typically cover retention or data storage, data analysis or dashboards, data sorting or correlation, data trigger alerts or protocols, data gathering or aggregation, data consolidation or archival and data collection for regulatory compliance. If you are looking for comprehensive solutions for SIEM Integration and SIEM Monitoring, look. No further than Managed IT Services Vermont.

The importance of SIEM stems from the fact that it is a key enabler for enterprise security management for companies. SIEM systems are capable of filtering through absolutely enormous amounts of security data, analyzing them and putting them in an order of priority to generate relevant security alerts.

The integrated nature of the SIEM software enables it to detect incidents in any organization’s network that may otherwise be able to evade scrutiny. It’s the software’s job to scrutinize and parse through the log entries in order to detect unusual and potentially malicious activity. SIEM systems can also be leveraged to understand the roots, timeline and logical progression of attacks as it gathers data and security events from multiple sources across the network. Through recreating the timeline of the attack, an organization gains the capability to understand the nature of the attack and get an estimate of its potential impact on the network and the business.

A SIEM system can be a great tool to help organizations meet and exceed complicated compliance and regulatory requirements. Since the system is capable of generating reports automatically that essentially logs all security events across the various nodes of the network, it can easily be provisioned to serve as data compilation. Without having the SIEM software in place, organizations may be forced to gather log data and compile security reports manually – a highly time-consuming and potentially resource-intensive task.

A SIEM system also benefits the incident management capability of organizations through empowering the technical team to understand the route of specific security incidents or attacks in detail. Using SIEM data, the team can also detect the compromised sources in the network and even provision automated response tools to prevent, mitigate and manage the impact of attacks in progress.

SIEM systems excel in providing the groundwork for the management of the strategic, tactical and operational elements of threat detection in any network. Companies that haven’t implemented SIEM already need to move fast to integrate it into their arsenal of threat investigation tools. This will also enable the team to have much improved visibility into their current risk status, potential threats and ongoing attacks (if any).

SIEM databases typically leverage updated global threat intelligence to enable rapid discovery of events. This is especially true for security incidents involving communications with blacklisted or malicious IP addresses. SIEM systems enable security teams to quickly determine attack paths as well as all relevant past interactions. All of this helps to cut down on response times drastically and leads to faster and more efficient threat resolutions.

The very palpable human resource requirements of security operations teams have been a growing cause of concern at many organizations due to rising incidences and intensity of cyber-attacks. However, even with the steep increase in the variety and volume of threats, a single SIEM server can be incredibly effective in streamlining workflows through the use of multi-source log data to generate a comprehensive report covering all relevant logged security events. SIEM systems are often designed with a degree of analyst-centric user experience that ultimately offers security teams more flexibility, ease of customization, and faster responses. SIEM systems can be particularly relevant and impactful for businesses with limited security budgets. In this regard, businesses can make use of outsourced security services or managed security services to enable SIEM.

SIEM systems make it easy for businesses to adhere to evolving standards of compliance requirements through its comprehensive approach to security and detailed security logs. The system can be effectively leveraged to simplify and streamline critical processes such as audits and governance tasks. IT Consulting Vermont offers expert deployment of SIEM Technology for SMBs.