Recently I got accepted in a cybersecurity internship that focuses on SOC (Security Operation Center). One of the major systems and concepts that is always being discussed is called SIEM (Security Information And Event management). In this post, I will walk you through SIEM and Its basic capabilities and its vital role in tackling cyber-attacks.
What is SIEM?
SIEM is a security and auditing system or solution that helps organizations detect, analyze, and respond to security threats before they harm business operations. One of the SIEM solutions that I used during my internship was called Q Radar. Q radar mainly works by ingesting or collecting data across the network and then analyzing malicious behaviour and finally generating alerts to security and IT teams to give them the visibility and information to respond. If there is a serious threat, the event will be escalated to L2 Soc analysts who are responsible for incident response and investigation.
How does SIEM work?
As I mentioned earlier, SIEM tools collect, aggregate, and analyze volumes of data from an organization’s applications, firewalls, servers, and users in real-time so security teams can detect and block attacks. SIEM tools use predetermined rules to help security teams define threats and generate alerts.
SIEM Capabilities
Log Management
SIEM ingests event data from a wide range of sources across an organization’s entire IT infrastructure, including on-premises and cloud environments. Event log data from users, endpoints, applications, data sources, cloud workloads, and networks—as well data from security hardware and software such as firewalls or antivirus software—is collected, correlated, and analyzed in real-time.
Event Correlation and Analytics
Event correlation is an essential part of any SIEM solution. Utilizing advanced analytics to identify and understand intricate data patterns, event correlation provides insights to quickly locate and mitigate potential threats to business security.
Incident Monitoring and Security Alerts
SIEM consolidates its analysis into a single, central dashboard where security teams monitor activity, triage alerts, identify threats, and initiate response or remediation. Most SIEM dashboards also include real-time data visualizations that help security analysts spot spikes or trends in suspicious activity.
The benefit of using a SIEM
SIEM tools offer many benefits that can help strengthen an organization’s overall security posture, including:
Real-time threat identification and response
Advanced threat intelligence
Regulatory compliance auditing and reporting
Greater transparency monitoring users, applications, and devices
The role of SIEM for businesses
The cybersecurity ecosystem of an organization should include SIEM. In order to streamline security operations, SIEM provides security teams with a central location to gather, combine, and analyze large amounts of data from across a business. Additionally, it offers operational features including dashboards that rank threat activity and compliance reporting and incident management.