SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) is one of many approaches to security management.
As a result of cybersecurity attacks, organisations find identifying, prioritising, and action against malicious threats more challenging than ever.
SIEM combines SIM (Security Information Management) and SEM (Security Event Management) to aggregate data from a variety of sources as well as identify any deviations and act against them.
SIEM is important as it works as a counterpoint fighting against threats.
What is SIEM?
SIEM (Security Incident and Event Management) identifies, monitors, records, and analyses an organisation’s cybersecurity events in real-time.
SIEM helps organisations have a centralised and comprehensive view of the security of their IT infrastructure.
This means that SIEM is the perfect solution for consolidating large volumes of threat data, helping filter information, and prioritising security alerts, making security more manageable.
TSIEM compliance regulations are:
How does SIEM work?
SIEM collects data from an organisation’s applications, security devices and host systems and brings it all together into one centralised platform.
A SIEM system gathers data from antivirus events, firewall logs and other locations and sorts it into neat categories. This helps a system to identify any threats via network security monitoring.
If a threat is identified, the system creates an alert and defines the attack’s threat level based on predetermined rules.
A SIEM system can be customised.
The SIEM system also helps improve efficiency when investigating potential cyber threats, thus saving time on potentially wasted on false positives.
Security Intelligence suggests that:
‘SIEMs (Security Information & Event Management) (Security Information & Event Management) help security operations centre (SOC) security analysts achieve four critical objectives: (1) gain visibility into their environments, (2) detect threats, (3) investigate abnormal activity and (4) escalate security alerts for a swift response to SOAR tools.’
What are SIEM Capabilities and Applications?
SIEM has a broad range of capabilities that offer comprehensive protection for organisations.
SIEM software allows organisations’ security teams to gain insights into malicious attackers such as tactics, techniques, and procedures (also known as TTP) and indicators of compromise (IOCs).
Some of the key features of SIEM solutions are:
- Data consolidation/ Data aggregation
- Data consolidation/ Data aggregation
- Managing log security events and data in real-time
- Categorising security events and data by threat severity
- Using threat intelligence to determine actions on potential threats
- Automated security event alerts
- Event correlation to indicate specific incidents
SIEM also provides in-depth reporting and supports compliance.
This helps organisations to simplify compliance reporting and organise event information for many industrial and governmental regulatory requirements.
Security Intelligence suggests that:
What are the Best Practices for a Successful SIEM Implementation?
To get the most out of a solution, organisations must ensure that they are using the best practices below:
Establish Scope and Requirements
SIEM has a customisable approach.
This means that organisations get a clear understanding of what log and event data they need to monitor and whether data required hosting/managing on-premises.
Not only will this help organisations save time on threat monitoring but it will also give them a clear view of compliance and regulation requirements – saving time in the long term.
Customise Correlation Rules
As touched on above, SIEM’s core value stems from event correlation.
Event correlation will help you understand and prioritise security events that may otherwise go unnoticed.
Although most SIEM solutions come with a set of in-built rules, you should customise these rules for your organisations requirements.
Incident Response Plan
Having an efficient incident response plan helps organisations provide guidelines and steps for security teams in a cyber-attack.
This service is supported by the solution’s real-time monitoring and enterprise security alerts.
Continuously Update SIEM System
Updating and configuring an organisation’s solution is necessary to stay ahead of the curve for malicious attackers and new evolving threats.
Why SIEM as a Service?
Sapphire has over 25 years of experience, our team of experienced cybersecurity analysts work with an outstanding best-in-class SIEM to deliver a managed service. Helping organisations cut through vast datasets and focus on necessary activities, Sapphire’s managed service reduces dwell time working to improve security incident response time.
Sapphire combines SIEM tools and security monitoring with our security operations centre’s (SOC) advanced threat detection capabilities and threat intelligence feeds to help organisations:
- Reduce dwell time
- Improve Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)
- Reduce their Mean Time to Respond (MTTR)
Sapphire’s managed SIEM services provide:
- Vigilance: Helping organisations to identify and prioritise security threats more effectively. This provides an efficient application of security resources and a continual reduction in detection time.
- Response: Sapphire’s managed service improved remediation and incident response times. This reduces exposure from reconnaissance, lateral movement on the network and data exfiltration. This helps organisations save time and allocate resources appropriately.
- Management: Sapphire’s 24×7 incident response managed solution is handled by an experienced team. This service enables you to focus on company strategy and not the the management of systems.
For more information about Sapphire’s managed services, please get in touch with us.
