Learn what SIEM is and why it’s useful for your organization.
If you’ve taken a dip into cybersecurity, you’ve likely heard of SIEM — often pronounced “sim.” SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management; SIEM solutions collect data that help IT admins analyze their system’s behavior. This can include things like:
- Suspicious events, like unusual login location or time
- Network activity
- Data from servers, firewalls, computers, applications, and so on
SIEMs digest this data and make it easier for IT and Security teams to understand and work with. This could include dashboards, charts, graphs, and more. SIEMs also notify admins when something looks amiss, helping them stay up to date with the condition of their systems and act quickly if need be.
Why is SIEM important?
The information gathered by an SIEM solution is valuable for IT and Security teams because it helps them understand what is going on with their infrastructure. It’s beneficial in the event of a cyber attack, as this data can help them determine the timeline and method of the attack, as well as the affected systems. Data from one part of their infrastructure can be correlated with others, giving admins a more thorough picture of the attack.
Understanding what happens when your organization is attacked isn’t just a “nice-to-have” feature — keeping your information secure is crucial. Attacks show where your systems are vulnerable, and the data processed by SIEMs can help inform how you reinforce your security posture.
Data processing
SIEMs act as a central place for data collection, storage, and analysis — meaning less work for IT and Security teams that need to understand the data. Suppose your organization’s CISO or other executive needs a security report. In that case, SIEMs make it easy to pull the necessary data and present it in a digestible form, whether for a technical or non-technical audience.
SIEMs use machine-based sorting to classify telemetry data. When the SIEM detects potential threats and/or vulnerabilities, it categorizes them based on their severity and impact. This way, IT and Security teams can prioritize their response according to the potential consequences of the event.
Threat detection and incident response
When SIEMs leverage machine learning, they can be a powerful tool to spot advanced threats — including those that the cybersecurity community hasn’t discovered. Since SIEMs are a centralized data processor, they can correlate events in separate parts of your system. This contributes to SIEMs’ ability to interpret suspicious activity; this activity may seem relatively innocent on its own, but when associated with other events, the data starts to show indicators of malicious activity.
Compliance
SIEMs are a great tool to determine your devices’ compliance status. They can create reports for use in a compliance audit, for regulations like:
- HIPAA: The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protects medical records and other personal health information.
- PCI DSS: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards protect data related to credit card use.
- GDPR: The EU General Data Protect Regulation governs how personal data is handled, giving users more control over their personal information.
- SOX: The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates how to handle financial information.
- FERPA: The US Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act governs how student information can be accessed.
SIEMs and Mobile Device Management
Notifications and alerts from SIEMs tell admins when to take action. Remediating issues doesn’t happen within the SIEM — that’s where Mobile Device Management (MDM) comes in.
Organizations can integrate their SIEMs and MDM systems to correlate inventory data and respond to incidents. For instance, say your SIEM identifies a device with a vulnerable software version. With this data, your MDM can take action and update the software to help restore the device’s compliance status. MDMs also offer SIEMs rich inventory data that can be correlated with other events.
