Blog

IT Insight: Protect your business with security reports in real time

advanced it support

Security information and event management (SIEM) software protects your business network from cyberattacks. A SIEM solution gathers log data from all infrastructure components in an organization—routers, switches, firewalls, servers, personal computers and devices, applications, cloud environments, and more. It then analyzes the data and provides insights to our Security Operations Center and security administrators for effective mitigation of security attacks. SIEM identifies security threats, suspicious network traffic, malware, and unusual network behavior. You are notified that you are under attack and therefore can mitigate threats quickly.

Did you know that half of small and medium-sized businesses have had their security breached? With an average of 99 days for a business to detect a data breach, imposters have way too much time available to steal your sensitive data and compromise your network with malware. A breach destroys your brand recognition and ruins company trust. This you cannot afford.

Without a tool such as SIEM, your IT security team would have to go through hundreds of thousands of logs and events every week within your network, to detect suspicious behavior. Without log monitoring, you have no idea what rogue employees are doing or what external threats are within your network.

How does SIEM work? SIEM solutions collect logs, the time-stamped records of events generated by every device and application in the network. Once the logs are collected within the SIEM software, they are analyzed using techniques, including log correlation and machine learning algorithms. Analyzing and correlating the logs helps SIEM solutions detect and prevent threats in an organization.

Why does your business need a SIEM solution? SIEM monitors all network activities to help troubleshoot issues with IT operations and ensures network security. It prevents data breaches by identifying threat indicators at an early stage. SIEM discovers irregular user behavior patterns to catch sophisticated attacks so you can quickly launch a defense. It issues real-time alerts for every security incident detected.

SIEM helps your business comply with IT regulations and assists with your company’s compliance requirements to do business. This is especially important for financial, medical and government networks.  SIEM will also lower your cyber insurance premiums.

Log management involves the collection, normalization, and analysis of log data, and is used to gain better visibility into network activities, detect attacks and security incidents, and meets the requirements of IT regulatory mandates. SIEM solutions employ different processes such as log correlation and forensics, which help detect data breaches and attacks in real time. Log management also includes securely archiving log data to retain logs for a custom period of time.

Security events are abnormal from regular activities within a network. An incident can put the sensitive data of an organization at risk and can lead to a data breach or an attack. Incident management includes detecting and mitigating security incidents. Incident detection is the process of identifying a security threat happening on a network.

Incidents are detected using various techniques like log correlation, UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics), and threat analytics. Incident resolution refers to solving an incident or an attack in the network and getting the network back to a functional state. SIEM solutions provide various workflows that can be automatically executed when an alert is triggered. These workflows help a great deal in preventing attacks from spreading laterally within the network.

The more advanced the threat, the more advanced, real-time monitoring is needed to detect and remove threats and minimize damage. If you would like to learn more about how a SIEM can help your business security landscape and mitigate your risks, contact a PCG security specialist to learn more. Real time monitoring is money in the bank.

JoAnn Hodgdon is vice president and co-founder of Portsmouth Computer Group (PCGiT) with her husband David. PCG provides comprehensive managed IT services, business continuity, security, cloud computing and Virtual CIO services to their clients.  You may reach her at joann@pcgit.com  or at www.pcgit.com.