What is Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)? | IBM

Regardless of how large or small your organization may be, taking proactive steps to monitor for and mitigate IT security risks is essential. SIEM solutions benefit enterprises in a variety of ways and have become a significant component in streamlining security workflows. Some of the benefits include:

Advanced real-time threat recognition
SIEM active monitoring solutions across your entire infrastructure significantly reduces the lead time required to identify and react to potential network threats and vulnerabilities, helping to strengthen security posture as the organization scales.

Regulatory compliance auditing
SIEM solutions enable centralized compliance auditing and reporting across an entire business infrastructure. Advanced automation streamlines the collection and analysis of system logs and security events to reduce internal resource utilization while meeting strict compliance reporting standards.

AI-driven automation
Today’s next-gen SIEM solutions integrate with powerful Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities, saving time and resources for IT teams as they manage business security. Using deep machine learning that automatically adapts to network behavior, these solutions can handle complex threat identification and incident response protocols in significantly less time than physical teams.

Improved organizational efficiency
Because of the improved visibility of IT environments that it provides, SIEM can be an essential driver of improving interdepartmental efficiencies. With a single, unified view of system data and integrated SOAR, teams can communicate and collaborate efficiently when responding to perceived events and security incidents.

For more information on the benefits of Security Information and Event Management and if it’s right for your business, explore additional SIEM resources from IBM’s security intelligence experts.

Detecting Advanced and Unknown Threats
Considering how quickly the cybersecurity landscape changes, organizations need to be able to rely on solutions that can detect and respond to both known and unknown security threats. Using integrated threat intelligence feeds and AI technology, SIEM solutions can successfully mitigate against modern-day security breaches such as:

• Insider threats – Security vulnerabilities or attacks that originate from individuals with authorized access to company networks and digital assets. These attacks could be the result of compromised credentials.
• Phishing attacks – Social engineering attacks masquerading as trusted entities, often used to steal user data, login credentials, financial information, or other sensitive business information.
• SQL Injections – Malicious code executed via a compromised webpage or application designed to bypass security measures and add, modify, or delete records in an SQL database.
• DDoS Attacks – A Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack designed to bombard networks and systems with unmanageable levels of traffic, degrading performance of websites and servers until they are unusable.
• Data exfiltration – Data theft or extrusion is commonly achieved by taking advantage of common or easy-to-crack passwords on network assets, or through the use of an Advanced Persistent Threat, or APT.

Conducting Forensic Investigations
SIEM solutions are ideal for conducting digital forensic investigations once a security incident occurs. SIEM solutions allow organizations to efficiently collect and analyze log data from all of their digital assets in one place. This gives them the ability to recreate past incidents or analyze new ones to investigate suspicious activity and implement more effective security processes.

Assessing and Reporting on Compliance
Compliance auditing and reporting is both a necessary and challenging task for many organizations. SIEM solutions dramatically reduce the resource expenditures required to manage this process by providing real-time audits and on-demand reporting of regulatory compliance whenever needed.

Monitoring Users and Applications
With the rise in popularity of remote workforces, SaaS applications and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies, organizations need the level of visibility necessary to mitigate network risks from outside the traditional network perimeter. SIEM solutions track all network activity across all users, devices, and applications, significantly improving transparency across the entire infrastructure and detecting threats regardless of where digital assets and services are being accessed.