Siem solutions - definition & overview

Glossary

SIEM tools


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Table of contents

    What are SIEM tools?

    Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools are typically external software solutions that aggregate and analyze log data to improve security and security response for IT teams.

    Key takeaways

    • SIEM tools help IT teams detect threats by providing alerts, data aggregation, and logging capabilities to prevent potential security breaches.
    • A Cloud SIEM solution helps organizations in heavily regulated industries, like healthcare and financial services, meet compliance regulations.
    • IT organizations are adopting a cloud-based approach to monitoring and security, using security analytics tools, like Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM with machine learning and incident response capabilities.

    Modern SIEM solutions, like Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM, centralize everything into one location, helping organizations respond to security events and threats more quickly and efficiently.

    As businesses expand their cloud infrastructure, they need efficient SIEM software and threat intelligence capabilities. Cloud-based SIEM solutions provide enhanced functionality for security teams managing complex, distributed environments.

    What do SIEM tools do?

    Here are the key capabilities of SIEM tools:

    • Log management systems aggregate and store log files from various endpoints and systems in a single, centralized location. LMS allows IT security analysts to view and correlate all of their log data from their disparate systems, reducing false positives and improving rule tuning.
    • Security log and event management (SEM) tools are very similar to log management systems. They’re geared for IT security analysts, not administrators, and allow analysts to aggregate log files from multiple data sources and systems.
    • Security event correlation tools sift through huge volumes of event logs to detect and identify correlations that could indicate security threats.
    • Security information management (SIM) tools collect, monitor, and analyze data from computer event logs. They also provide automated features and real-time alerts that trigger when a system might be compromised. These tools quicken response times, provide automated reports and help to reduce false positives.

    Together, SIEM tools help organizations in heavily regulated industries, like healthcare and financial services, meet compliance regulations.

    What to look for when evaluating SIEM tools

    When choosing the right SIEM for your organization, make sure it includes these capabilities. 

    Data aggregation and analysis

    The best SIEM tool should aggregate, analyze, and store log files and system events into comprehensible formats. SIEM tools should store security data over extended periods, allowing security teams to correlate data for security optimization while formatting logs into easy-to-understand reports.

    Comprehensive security visibility

    Look for a platform that gives you a “big picture” view of security and cyber threats that’s not readily available from looking just at raw log data. As organizations expand, endpoints diversify, and sources proliferate, SIEM tools will become a necessary step in understanding security threats on a macro-system level.

    Advanced analytics and automation

    Choose SIEM software that analyzes security alerts from applications and hardware across a network. Again, with organizations expanding, it’s hard for IT security analysts to manually trigger remediation steps or monitor all security threats. Modern SIEM tools help automate those processes and analyze data on a singular-to-central level.

    With so many different solutions out there, it’s difficult to assess which SIEM tools to use. Some of the most important things to consider when deciding on a solution include the following:

    • Will it improve log aggregation and analysis?
    • Will it help with compliance?
    • Will it help with past and present cybersecurity threats?
    • Does it have automated or fast response times?
    • Will it provide forensics analysis that dates back weeks, months, and years?
    • Does it provide real-time monitoring capabilities and security alerts?
    • Will it make it easier for your IT security analysts to test your network and IT infrastructure?
    • Does it help you maintain the efficacy of your endpoint security strategy?

    Why choose Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM?

    SIEM tools were once all an organization needed to monitor, analyze, and protect its infrastructure, but today’s security teams need more intelligent Cloud SIEM solutions to adapt to our new cloud-first landscape. 

    Sumo Logic offers a modern SIEM with lower costs, shorter deployment times, and a more sophisticated, modern approach to enterprise security and data analysis. 

    Discover what Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM can do for you.

    FAQs

    A SIEM solution can enhance threat detection and response by consolidating and analyzing log data from various sources, such as application logs, system logs, security logs and endpoint logs. This unified view of log data allows for real-time monitoring of security events, anomaly detection and correlation of incidents across the network.

    SIEM platforms help organizations ensure compliance by centralizing and correlating log data from various sources to provide a unified view of security events. By proactively monitoring and analyzing logs in real-time, SIEM solutions can detect and alert potential compliance violations, unauthorized access attempts or security policy breaches. SIEM platforms can also generate detailed reports and audit trails based on log data, facilitating compliance audits and demonstrating adherence to regulatory standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and others.

    SIEM delivers superior incident response and enterprise security outcomes through several key capabilities, including:

    Data collection – SIEM tools aggregate event and system logs and security data from various sources and applications in one place.

    Correlation – SIEM tools use various correlation techniques to link bits of data with common attributes and help turn that data into actionable information for SecOps teams.

    Alerting – SIEM tools can be configured to automatically alert SecOps or IT teams when predefined signals or patterns are detected that might indicate a security event.

    Data retention – SIEM tools are designed to store large volumes of log data, ensuring that security teams can correlate data over time and enabling forensic investigations into threats or cyber-attacks that may have initially gone undetected.

    Parsing, log normalization and categorization – SIEM tools make it easier for organizations to parse through logs that might have been created weeks or even months ago. Parsing, log normalization and categorization are additional features of SIEM tools that make logs more searchable and help to enable forensic analysis, even with millions of log entries to sift through.

    Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM is part of the Sumo Logic security platform, a cloud-native multi-use solution powered by logs. In addition to Cloud SIEM, Sumo Logic’s robust log analytics platform supports Infrastructure Monitoring, Application Observability and Logs for Security for monitoring, troubleshooting and securing your apps.

    Customers choose Sumo Logic SIEM for these differentiated features:

    One integrated log analytics platform – a single integrated solution for developers, security, operations and LOB teams.

    Cloud-native, distributed architecture – scalable, multi-tenant platform powered by logs that never drop your data.

    Tiered analytics and credit licensing – enjoy flexible subscriptions that scale as your data grows faster than your budget.

    Machine learning and advanced analytics – identify, investigate and resolve issues faster with machine learning.

    Out-of-the-box audit and compliance – you can easily demonstrate compliance with the broadest certifications and attestations.

    Secure by design – We invest millions each year on certifications, attestations, pen testing, code review and paid bug bounty programs.