SIEM & XDR
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
SIEM is a software solution that is integral part of any security ecosystem. Collecting data from multiple systems and analyzing the data for abnormal behavior which could lead to a possible cyber incident.
SIEM analyzes, stores and detects threats and help the security team with investigation alerts.
These are just main features, some of additional features include but not limited to.
Basic Monitoring
Threat Detection
Incident Detection
Alerts
Log collection
Incident response & forensics, and more.
Maintaining and managing a SIEM could be expensive depending on the size of one’s organization. There are 3 types that an organization could choose from,
In-House/On-Premise — This type of SIEM is managed In-house, this could be expensive to implement and also train security personnel, but as an advantage, you get to tailor the tool as per your organization’s requirements and you have the complete control over the SIEM platform.
Cloud-Based — Vendors also provide SIEM platforms as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) in cloud. Some advantages include, reduced infrastructure costs as you do not need to buy and maintain hardware as well as maintenance for said SIEM platform. Also save you from costs of training. Some disadvantages are that we do not have complete control over the tool and the data will be stored off-site which could be sensitive.
Hybrid — Sometimes referred to as Co-Managed. It can be completely on-premise or cloud based, but you get to work with the experts and get assistance from the provider and also, they can share threat Intel with the organization.
Extended Detection & Response (XDR)
What is XDR and how is it different from SIEM?
XDR can do more than a SIEM in terms of increased response and detection capabilities. Over the years SIEM has improved so much in including latest technologies like threat detection using machine learning as well as threat intelligence. Current SIEM tools have come a long way from legacy SIEM. Setup and Integration can be easier with XDR.
With the larger base of both internal & external threat intelligence, there are less false positives with XDR solutions. XDR provides native support with behavioral analysis. XDR provides better response options also for Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) as well as Network Detection & Response (NDR).
Unlike SIEM, XDR events are stored in a common data format resulting in larger base of Intel, called normalization. The Quality of the data in less and Quantity is huge in case of SIEM unlike XDR which has single data formats which helps in getting High quality and low quantity data, with less tuning out of the box. Which results in less Alert Fatigue.
