Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Security Information and Event Management(SIEM) is an application that provides enterprise security professionals with resource analysis and aggregation in an IT infrastructure stack. This software evolved from a log management resource through the combination of security event management (SEM) with Security Information Management (SIM).

Log management is a very important component of SIEM. It is made up of data aggregation, data analysis, and data normalization.

The main functionality of SIEM software includes data collection from domain controllers, servers, network devices, and many other sources.

How Does SIEM Work?

The main functionality of SIEM is to collect and aggregate log data from an IT infrastructure stack.

Once the log data from components such as firewall filters, networks, and many others, the software identifies, categorizes, and analyses the log data. The data is then used for advanced reporting on security events such as malware detection and intrusion detection based on the security protocols put into place.

Other SIEM functionality includes, but not limited to:

• Alerting
• Forensic analysis and incident response
• Basic to advanced security monitoring
• Threat detection
• Security compliance automation

Some major SIEM tools include Splunk, which is considered by Gartner as a leader of the space, IQM radar, and LogRhythm which is popular among SMEs.

SIEM Use Cases

The increase in demand for IT security has made SIEM gain a lot of popularity in the IT ecosystem. Some real-world use cases of SIEM software includes:

• Detection of Cyberwarfare with the highest degree of accuracy
• SIEM pattern detection, notifications, and dashboards can indicate anomalies and misconfiguration in security protocols
• SIEM has played a major role in making compliance with standards such as GDPR, SOX, and PCI easier
• Prevention of internal threats