SIEM tools - definition & overview

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools are typically external software solutions that aggregate and analyze log data with the hopes of improving security and security response for IT teams. SIEM does this by centralizing everything into one location. As businesses expand, so do their needs for protection on the various endpoints and sources connected to their network. SIEM tools overlook all of these disparate aspects of a company, including all the data and log information, into one location, enabling organizations to respond to security events more quickly and efficiently.

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 readily and easily view and correlate all of their log data from their disparate systems.

• Security log and event management (SEM) tools are very similar to log management systems. They are geared for IT security analysts, not administrators, and allow analysts to easily and readily aggregate log files from multiple sources and systems.

• Security event correlation tools sift through huge volumes of event logs to detect and identify correlations between events 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
  

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

SIEM tools should provide state-of-the-art incident reporting and enterprise security outcomes through the following capabilities:

• Aggregate, analyze, and store log files and system events into comprehensible formats. SIEM tools should not only store log data over long periods of time, allowing for teams to correlate data for security optimization, but they also format said log files and data into models and reports that are easy to share and comprehend.

• Give a “big picture” view of security and cyber threats that are 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.

• Analyze security alerts from all manner of 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. SIEM tools help automate those processes and analyze data on a singular-to-central level.

SIEM tools were once all an IT organization needed to monitor, analyze, and protect its infrastructure. Because more and more IT organizations are adopting a cloud-based approach to monitoring and security, security-analytics tools, like Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM, are becoming more popular to meet security needs.

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