What is the Definition of SIEM?
Security information and event management (SIEM) is a set of tools and services that combine security events management and security information management capabilities to enable analysts to review log and event data, understand and prepare for threats, and retrieve and report on log data.
What is the Purpose of a SIEM?
Today’s businesses are composed of many types of applications, databases, devices and users. These complex environments can provide many places where advanced or novice adversaries can operate undetected for months or even years. This problem is caused by a lack of visibility into the environment.
SIEMs provide visibility into malicious activity by pulling data from every corner of an environment and aggregating it in a single centralized interface, where it can be used to qualify alerts, create reports and support incident response.
Who Needs a SIEM?
Any company that is concerned about data security is a suitable candidate for a SIEM. Organizations subject to regulatory compliance, such as retailers and healthcare providers, particularly benefit from a SIEM because SIEMs ease compliance audits.
However, only slightly more than half of organizations that say they need a SIEM actually use one. Despite the fact that cybersecurity budgets continue to increase, filling the positions necessary to make a SIEM worthwhile remains challenging. Forty-four percent of organizations report difficulties in achieving the benefits their SIEMs could provide because of a lack of on-staff expertise. An option for companies like these is to engage a third-party provider, such as a managed security services provider (MSSP) or SIEM-as-a-service, to operate their SIEM on their behalf.
Enterprises are most likely to use a SIEM because they already have the well-staffed security operations centers (SOCs) necessary to
