Understanding SIEM In Network Security

Security Information and Event Management was introduced in 2005 It analyses security alerts in real-time. Fundamentally, SIEM does three things. Alert, normalize and store log events. This includes alerts from servers, databases, devices and endpoints. These are stored in a secured central location. SIEM can collect information from physical and virtual devices that are located both on-site and outside the organization’s network. In this article, I will discuss all that you need to know about SIEM in Network Security.

It is not possible for investigators to investigate all login events. If these investigations are not carried out, you don’t have a guarantee that attackers have not had access to your device. It runs advanced analytics on data, both in real-time and later. This is to identify network security events that should be investigated. The potential events are prioritized by risk, Severity and impact.

Need For SIEM

This advanced security tools can also monitor when applications and users behaved abnormally on the network. They can identify some of the indicators of compromise and apply sophisticated machine learning models.

It also helps in building up all the security vacuum in order to prevent hackers from having access to the network. For many organisations, the primary driver for purchasing SIEM tools has been regulatory compliance.

There was an introduction of standards in many IT organizations. We have the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard, HIPPA and other regulatory measures as well as GDPR in 2018. Businesses and other organisations ignore compliance at the initial stage but Cyber Attacks become more complicated. That is why IT Security needed holistic data that will allow organisations and security experts to understand the nature of attacks.

Second Generation SIEM

In the second stage of the development of SIEM, it has a direct detection capability. It can now do historical and real-time analytics. It now adopts the use of Entity Behaviour Analytics. Recently, SIEM has also adopted the use of Machine Learning capabilities. This is particularly needed when you are dealing with Big Data. There is also the problem of segregation and integration of users with SIEM in the second generation.

It was difficult to identify attacks. It also demands a high level of expertise from the users to know what they are looking for.
SIEM was not about to handle these situations. It was also aggravated by the two other facts.

#1 IT Security suffers from insufficiently qualified professionals.
#2 The SILO Operations mode used in many security organisations also increases the complexities involved in dealing with situations.

This is because some of the networks involve different protocols and vendors which are very difficult to integrate. This also increases the chances of human errors and reduces network security visibilities. This made it difficult for an organization to move data and architecture from an information platform to a threat intelligence centre.

SIEM has internal and external security limitations.

There was a systemic short supply of Network Security Experts. SIEM has the capability of gathering network and traffic information from various devices connected to it. It can also share this new information about network security and threats with other vendors and internal security teams. The Fortinet SIEM Product is named FortiSIEM and it has all the capabilities discussed so far.

Action Point
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I know you might agree with some of the points that I have raised in this article. You might not agree with some of the issues raised. Let me know your views about the topic discussed. We will appreciate it if you can drop your comment. Thanks in anticipation.

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