SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) is a solution for cyber security monitoring, detection, and investigation, SIEM collects, manages, and analyzes event logs generated by networks and systems, contributing to early detection of security incidents and prompt response.
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By combining security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM), SIEM systems provide centralized visibility into security events and log data generated by endpoints, servers, applications, and network devices. This approach enables organizations to detect, analyze, and respond to potential threats in real time.
SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management. It is a cybersecurity solution that collects, analyzes, and correlates security data from various sources to detect, investigate, and respond to potential threats in real time.
SIEM systems operate by collecting and aggregating log data, performing correlation analysis to identify anomalies, and generating actionable alerts for security teams. They also provide detailed reports to help with compliance and auditing requirements. As a cornerstone of modern Security Operations Centers (SOCs), SIEM enhances threat detection, incident response, and overall security posture by transforming raw log data into actionable intelligence, ensuring organizations can proactively mitigate risks.
SIEM systems gather log and alert data from various devices and applications across the IT infrastructure, including firewalls, servers, endpoints, databases, and cloud services. This aggregation ensures that all security-relevant information is stored in one place, streamlining visibility and eliminating silos. Logs can include user activity, system errors, access attempts, and application-specific events. The ability to ingest data from diverse sources enables SIEM to provide a holistic view of an organization’s security landscape.
Correlating security events involves analyzing patterns and relationships between multiple logs to identify potential threats or suspicious behaviors. For example, a single failed login attempt might not trigger concern, but multiple failed attempts followed by a successful login from an unusual location could indicate a brute force attack. By applying predefined rules, machine learning algorithms, and context-aware analysis, SIEM identifies these patterns and prioritizes potential security incidents for investigation.
When anomalous activity or a potential security incident is detected, SIEM systems generate alerts based on pre-defined thresholds and rules. These alerts are sent to security teams via dashboards, emails, or integrated response tools. For instance, an alert might be triggered for unauthorized access to a critical database or abnormal traffic spikes indicative of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. Alerts are prioritized to help security personnel focus on the most critical issues first, improving response efficiency.
SIEM platforms generate comprehensive reports that summarize security events, trends, and incident responses. These reports are essential for understanding the organization's security posture over time, meeting compliance requirements, and providing actionable insights to improve future defenses. They can also include workflows for incident management, detailing step-by-step procedures for containment, eradication, and recovery after a breach. Reports often serve as critical documentation for internal reviews and external audits.
SIEM tools collect and analyze large volumes of data from organization's endpoints in real-time and detect and block cyber threats by working alongside security teams
You need to define rules to help those teams and generate alerts
SIEM tools help as well with:
SIEM and SOAR tools have been instrumental in centralizing security event data and automating response workflows. Despite their utility, they face significant challenges:
While these tools remain valuable, their fragmented approach to detection and response has created an opportunity for XDR to provide a more cohesive solution.
Similar to SIEM as a tool to improve security level and efficiency is XDR (Extended Detection and Response). The differences between SIEM and XDR are as follows:
By introducing SIEM, logs can be managed centrally. This eliminates the need to manage logs for each device, and reduces management errors and omissions. In addition, SIEM has the function of normalizing collected logs and visualizes the entire IT environment, enabling efficient and comprehensive management.
SIEM centralizes log management and performs correlation analysis in real time, enabling early detection of incidents and threats. When a threat symptom or incident is discovered, a quick response can be made, minimizing the spread of damage.
Security incidents are not only caused by external cyber attacks. Preventing misconduct by employees of your own organization is also an important security measure for an organization. By introducing SIEM, you can detect suspicious employee behavior and unauthorized access. SIEM is also effective in preventing internal fraud.
By using SIEM, you can streamline security operations. By automating a series of tasks such as log aggregation, normalization, and analysis, you can reduce the resources required for your organization's security measures. Although a certain level of security knowledge is required to operate SIEM, introducing SIEM will enable you to implement more efficient security measures than before.
SIEM is primarily used in a Security Operations Center (SOC), an organization that monitors security within an organization and understands the occurrence of cyber attacks and incidents, SIEM is an important tool for security professionals to support efficient security operations in the following ways
SIEMs manage various logs in an integrated manner and detect signs of abnormal activity or attacks, and alert security personnel. For example, in addition to detecting malware and other unauthorized behavior, SIEM will alert you when suspicious events are detected, such as multiple login attempts to servers where critical information is stored, or use of cloud services not authorized by your company.
Based on unauthorized or suspicious events, SIEM investigates whether or not it is a cyber attack (normal behavior, access error, etc.). If determined to be a cyber-attack, the route and scope of the attack, including whether it is an external or internal cyber-attack, can be traced to provide clues for incident response. The following measures will be taken
From a medium- to long-term perspective, visualize the status of violations of your company's security policies and the impact of cyber attacks, and create a report. By visualizing what kind of cyber-attacks the company has been subjected to over a period of one month, three months, six months, one year, etc., the company can consider what security measures it should take next.
The main use cases of SIEM are listed above, but the greatest benefit of SIEM for security personnel is the ability to quickly visualize events and log information from multiple different products and link them to the next action.
While SIEM brings benefits to SOCs and other organizations in terms of improved security and operational efficiency, it also presents the following challenges.
Complex implementation and configuration: SIEMs are complex systems that require time and expertise to implement and configure. Security professionals must continually work to integrate device logs and data sources, configure rules, and tune alerts.
A large amount of log data must be processed and analyzed. Appropriate hardware and storage resources are needed to process large amounts of data. It is also necessary to manage log data retention periods and data compression/reduction.
SIEMs generate alerts based on predefined rules and patterns. However, false positives (false positives: legitimate activity mistakenly detected as malicious) and false negatives (false negatives: malicious activity missed) can occur. Also, depending on the configuration, a large number of alerts may be received, requiring continuous tuning of alerts and improvement of rules on the user side.
When an event is detected in real time, the actual incident must be confirmed and responded to. If security personnel does not tune up alerts ahead of time, they will be required to respond to alerts of various sizes, which may in turn reduce operational efficiency.
Proper implementation and operation of SIEM requires security analysis and log management skills. It also requires the availability of appropriate resources (personnel, hardware, and software).
Siloed tools can leave critical security gaps. Trend Micro Vision One addresses these challenges by offering a unified platform that integrates SIEM, SOAR, IAM, firewall, threat intelligence, IT service management, and more. Our solution ensures robust prevention, detection, and response capabilities across your entire security ecosystem.
Whether you are managing cloud operations, IT infrastructure, or SOC, Trend Micro Vision One provides comprehensive protection. From hybrid and multi-cloud security to endpoint, email, and network safeguards, our platform ensures your borderless workforce is secure. Experience accelerated threat detection and response across all security layers with Trend Micro Vision One.
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