Security information and event management (SIEM) software has existed for a while, evolving from the log management discipline. Security event management analyzes log and event data in real time for threat monitoring, event correlation, and incident response. And security information management collects, analyzes, and reports on log data. SIEM combines the two, utilizing tools that have become an important part of the data security ecosystem. The tools can aggregate data from multiple systems, analyze the data in order to catch abnormal behavior or potential cyber attacks, and provide a central place to collect events and alerts.
The original adoption of SIEM systems in large enterprises came from the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliance. But the software and tools have remained and been adopted by smaller organizations, with increased concerns over advanced persistent threats. SIEM allows users to simplify their security by offering a single space to view all security-related data and spot patterns out of the ordinary.
A SIEM system can be rules-based or employ a statistical correlation engine to establish relationships between event log entries; advanced systems have continued to evolve to include user and entity behavior analytics, and security orchestration, automation, and response.
These systems work by deploying multiple agents in a hierarchical manner to gather security-related events from end-user devices, servers, and network equipment. SIEM systems can also collect information from security equipment, such as firewalls, antivirus, or intrusion prevention systems. The process of SIEM systems can be broken down to:
- Data collection—where sources of network security information (including servers, operating systems, firewalls, antivirus software) feed event data into a SIEM tool. Some tools use agents to collect event logs, which are processed before being sent to the SIEM. Others offer agentless data collection.
- Policies—a profile can be created by an administrator, which can define the behavior of enterprise systems, both under normal conditions and during pre-defined security incidents. SIEMS can provide default rules, alerts, reports, and dashboards that can be tuned and customized for security needs.
- Data consolidation and correlation—SIEM solutions can consolidate, parse, and analyze log files. Any events are categorized based on raw data and the application of correlation rules to identify security issues.
- Notifications—if an event or set of events triggers a SIEM rule, the system sets out notifications.
Not all SIEM systems are built the same; some contain similar features, while others offer different ones. A SIEM system includes the following core features:
- Log data management—which includes real-time data collection, analysis, and correlation for productivity and efficiency
- Network visibility—through the inspection of packet captures between the visibility into network flows, SIEM analytics can offer additional insights into assets, IP addresses, and protocols to reveal malicious files or other data exfiltration of personally identifiable information across a network
- Threat intelligence—incorporating either proprietary and open-source intelligence into a SIEM solution can be essential for recognizing and combatting modern-day vulnerabilities and attack signatures
- Analytics—while the level of data analysis will differ between solutions, those that incorporate machine learning and artificial intelligence can help and improve the investigation into sophisticated and complex attacks
- Real-time alerting—SIEM solutions can offer alerting customized to business needs and make use of pre-defined, tiered alerts and notifications across teams
- Dashboards and reporting—depending on the size of the network, an organization can have hundreds and even thousands of network events, and having a reporting system with a customizable view can help in understanding events and reducing response lag time
- IT compliance—not all SIEM tools offer a full range of compliance tools; there are SIEM tools that offer a range of compliance coverage for auditing and on-demand reporting
- Security and IT integrations—integrating SIEM with a variety of security and non-security log sources; and SIEM can integrate with existing investments in security and IT tooling
The integration of a SIEM system into an existing IT and cybersecurity infrastructure begins with determining the scope of an implementation, building policy-based rules, and using the policy by comparing its rules to other compliance requirements based on organizational needs. As well, an organization needs to fine-tune correlation rules in order for the SIEM software to observe the behavior and increase detection efficacy and reduce false positives.
An organization also needs to understand what the critical resources are, in order to monitor various aspects of those resources. Vulnerabilities on a monitored network should include other defensive cybersecurity boundaries, in order to protect a network and testing of the system against attacks or events to assess how the SIEM software reacts. Once a system is integrated, an organization can develop an implementation response plan in order to understand how staff should act following a SIEM alert.
SIEM software can make it easier to manage security by filtering massive amounts of security data and prioritizing security alerts the software can generate, through the detection of incidents and analyzing logs to identify signs of malicious activities. There are various ways SIEM can benefit an organization and streamline security workflows. These benefits include:
SIEM can offer active monitoring solutions across an organization's infrastructure to reduce the lead time required to identify and react to potential network threats and vulnerabilities to strengthen the security posture of an organization.
These solutions can offer centralized compliance auditing and reporting for an organization, with advanced automation that can streamline the collection and analysis of system logs and security events. This can, in turn, reduce internal resource utilization but continue to meet the compliance reporting standards.
Newer SIEM software solutions integrate security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) capabilities, which can save time for IT teams through machine learning that adapts to network behavior in order to recognize incidents in less time than physical teams.
SIEM, due to the increased visibility of IT provided by the software, can improve interdepartmental efficiencies. Through a unified view of system data, SIEM can allow teams to communicate and collaborate in new ways, especially in response to perceived threats and security incidents.
With the changing cybersecurity landscape, organizations often require a solution that can detect and respond to unknown and known security threats. SIEM systems work to find known and unknown behavior through threat intelligence feeds and AI technology. These include security breaches such as:
- Insider threats
- Phishing attacks
- SQL injections
- DDoS attacks
- Data exfiltration
SIEM solutions can be useful for conducting digital forensic investigations after a security incident occurs. This can allow an organization to collect and analyze log data from all of their digital assets through a single place. These solutions can also allow organizations to recreate past incidents in order to learn from them and find new suspicious activities for more effective security processes.
With the rise of remote workforces, SaaS applications, and bring-your-own-device policies, organizations can benefit from a new level of visibility to mitigate network risks from outside the traditional network perimeter. SIEM can also track network activity amongst users, devices, and applications to improve transparency and detect threats regardless of where digital assets and services are being accessed.
