Cybersecurity

CYBERSECURITY: The Many Capabilities of a SIEM Solution

21. September 2022
4 min. reading time

News of successful cyberattacks against organizations appears regularly. In many of these cases, the affected organizations were not alerted to potential threats in time by a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution.

A SIEM is primarily designed to monitor potential attack vectors by collecting and analyzing data from a wide range of security sources. These data sources are integrated into the platform to provide centralized visibility across the IT environment. Detection rules configured within the SIEM can identify suspicious activity and potential attacks in near real time, enabling a Security Operations Center (SOC) to respond quickly and effectively.

Many SIEM platforms include extensive libraries of predefined detection rules. These are often based on the MITRE ATT&CK® framework, allowing organizations to detect malicious activity throughout the different stages of the cyberattack lifecycle.

Cybersecurity SIEM

Cloud or On-Premises?

Cloud providers typically deliver SIEM solutions as Software as a Service (SaaS).

This deployment model offers several advantages:

  • Faster delivery of new features and updates
  • Virtually unlimited scalability
  • High computing capacity for machine learning and advanced analytics
  • Access to large datasets that improve threat detection capabilities

Because machine learning requires significant processing power and vast amounts of reference data, cloud environments often provide a more practical foundation than traditional on-premises infrastructures.

However, on-premises SIEM solutions continue to play an important role.

Organizations that require complete control over sensitive security data often prefer on-premises deployments. In addition, cloud-based SIEM solutions may involve recurring subscription costs or additional integration fees when ingesting data from local infrastructure.

Data Sources Are the Key to Effective Detection

A SIEM solution is only as valuable as the quality of the data it receives and the insights it generates.

Simply forwarding every available log into a SIEM does not automatically improve security. Organizations must identify the most relevant data sources and develop meaningful detection strategies based on their business risks.

For example, while data from SAP systems and applications can be collected by many standard SIEM platforms, only a limited number of solutions can properly interpret and analyze those logs. In this area, SAP and Microsoft offer specialized capabilities for application security monitoring of SAP environments.

By contrast, common data sources such as Microsoft operating systems are supported by virtually every SIEM platform.

Analytics and Automation

A security platform is only as effective as the people configuring and operating it. If a SIEM solution is overly complex, responding to security alerts can become inefficient and increase the risk of critical incidents.

An effective SIEM should therefore provide:

  • Clear and intuitive dashboards
  • Easy-to-configure reporting
  • Simple creation of new detection rules
  • A user-friendly interface

Advanced automation represents the next level of security operations. Automated workflows—such as triggering actions in other security tools through APIs—are typically enabled through a Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platform or an integrated SOAR module.

Cloud or On-Premises — Choose the Right Protection

Whether you choose a cloud-based or an on-premises SIEM solution, the platform should align with your organization’s security requirements, infrastructure, and operational goals. For maximum effectiveness, a SIEM should ideally be supported by a Security Operations Center (SOC) that continuously monitors security events and responds to threats. We’ll take a closer look at the role of the SOC in our next blog article.

Contact: security-experts@oediv.de

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