Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) as-a-service, also referred to as managed SIEM, provides a valuable alternative to on-premise SIEM software solutions.
This post provides an overview of SIEM-as-a-service and the advantages it offers to businesses.
What is SIEM as-a-service?
SIEM-as-a-service combines security event management (SEM) and security information management (SIM) in order to monitor threats, provide real time security alerts and increase compliance. SEM centralises interpretation and storage of logs while SIM collects data to be analysed for reporting.
SIEM as a service combines these two systems together in order to enable the fast analysis and identification of security events in real time. It enables organisations to quickly benefit from the expertise and resources of an experienced security provider without the associated costs and challenges of running a SIEM in-house. This enables businesses to achieve greater cyber resilience, while maximising their security investments.
The benefits of SIEM as-a-service
Organisations that invest in on-premises SIEM can quickly find that they are unable manage their solution without a large team of security experts to deploy it, plus analyse and respond to the high volume of alerts and identify false positives. The common problem of alert fatigue can often lead to important alerts being missed or overlooked.
SIEM-as-a-service helps organisations to bridge the resource gap by providing the latest SIEM technology as well as the security professionals needed to manage and monitor it, 24/7. The capacity to quickly detect and identify security events is just one of the many features that makes SIEM-as-a-service a key security resource for businesses and IT departments. Some of its benefits include:
- Increased efficiency
- Fewer potential security breaches
- Reduced security event impact
- Lower costs
- Better reporting, log collection, analysis and retention
- Enhanced compliance
Here’s a more in-depth look at some of the benefits of SIEM-as-a-service, with a brief explanation of some of the points listed above.
Increased efficiency
Because SIEM-as-a-service can collate event logs from multiple devices across networks, security staff are able to use these to identify potential issues more easily. This can also simplify checks on activity and speed up analysis of files, allowing employees to carry out tasks with ease and spend more time on other aspects of their job. In this way, SIEM systems can also improve reporting processes across the business, as well as reducing staffing costs.
Improved security data
Because SIEM-as-a-service aggregates and normalises an organisation’s security data, it enhances the scope for it to be analysed and utilised in incident response workflows. Following on from this, the SIEM is then able to store normalised security data, providing extended analytics and reporting which as well as improving visibility, which can also help with compliance.
Enhanced security visibility
Managed SIEM solutions collect security event data from across an organisation’s network, enabling them to mitigate the risk of threat actors hiding within networks. They then analyse this data, helping to detect and respond to network threats as soon as possible.
Better handling of security breaches and events
By providing a swift response to any security events detected, SIEM-as-a-service can dramatically reduce the impact of a security breach on an organisation. Catching a breach in the early stages, or detecting a security event before it can take hold, can significantly reduce not only the financial cost of a breach but also the scale of business damage and disruption.
Comprehensive reporting
SIEM-as-a-service provides in-depth reporting on the security status of the entire network, ensuring a cohesive overview. It achieves this by collecting and storing logs from the different security tools and generating reроrts on the whole network, rather than just one part of it.
Enhanced compliance
SIEM-as-a-service can significantly simplify the process of meeting compliance responsibilities. Rather than organisations having to gather data from all of their hosts in their IT network and compile it manually, SIEM-as-a-service streamlines all of the processes entailed with logging security data and compliance reporting. In doing so, it reduces the time involved with meeting compliance requirements and streamlines the process of passing compliance audits. Added to this, many SIEM tools have built-in capabilities that allow organisations to implement controls which meet the requirements of specific standards, like ISO 27001.
Choosing a SIEM-as-a-service solution
With so many managed SIEM solutions available, it can be difficult to identify the one that is right for your organisation. Rather than focusing purely on price or reputation, businesses should consider how well a SIEM-as-a-service solution will integrate with their existing data sources to ensure they achieve the full threat coverage and visibility needed to address SIEM use cases. It is also important to carefully consider your choice of deployment options and support for threat intelligence sources and incident response capabilities.
How Kroll can help
With the threat landscape continually evolving, real-time security monitoring and threat hunting for complete visibility of security events is now a vital layer of cyber defence. Kroll’s managed SIEM service combines industry-leading technology, elite security experts and up-to-the minute threat intelligence to enhance threat visibility across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments.
You can rely on the fact that, at Kroll, only industry experts are involved with the deployment, configuration and ongoing monitoring of your SIEM solution. Our global security operations centre (SOC) teams are made up of analysts, engineers, threat hunters and incident responders with a wealth of experience in supporting organisations with SIEM services.
Kroll Responder, our managed detection and response (MDR) solution, utilises SIEM alongside telemetry from other endpoint and cloud sources. Combined with frontline threat intelligence, proprietary forensics tools and unrivalled incident response experience, this rich telemetry delivers enhanced visibility, rapid detection and elite response capabilities.
Learn more about Kroll Responder