The Role a SIEM Plays in a SOC

Every business owner knows that their company’s cybersecurity is crucial these days.

Otherwise, they risk losing their customers’ sensitive data and breaching their privacy. Not only can this ruin the public’s perception of a company, but it can also end up being very expensive trying to retrieve the lost data and repairing IT systems that have been infected by viruses and malware. For this reason, more and more business owners are ensuring that they have strong SIEMs and SOCs in place in their company.

Security information and event management (SIEM) is increasingly important to businesses these days. As many companies are now regularly growing their whole IT systems and networks, there are new risks that come from various areas. It can be easy for a company’s larger networks to breach compliance, operations support can become a lot more strained, and there is often an increased risk from cybercriminals.

In order to reinforce the SIEM in a business, it is necessary to run a very efficient SOC (security operations center). Whether your company is only small with a handful of employees or you run a large corporation, it’s essential that you have a SOC in place. You can then have peace of mind knowing that your data and sensitive information is well protected at all times.

Both the SIEM and SOC are vital to each other. Without one, the other would be a lot less successful. In this blog post, we’ll run through the role the SIEM plays in a SOC.

How Does A SOC Use A SIEM

One of the main responsibilities of the SOC is to set up and manage all of the security monitoring. They will no doubt use various tools to monitor all of this data, such as logins and logouts and firewall monitoring. Using a reliable SIEM tool can help the SOC to effectively monitor all of this without adding any extra tasks to their to-do lists. By using these kinds of tools to automate this job, then the SOC will become a lot more efficient.

Once the SIEM starts to collect a sizeable amount of data, the SOC can then go ahead and analyze it. By taking a deep dive into all of this analysis, data managers and security officers will then be able to see the various ways they can improve their current security processes.

The Steps To Take When Working Through An Attack

If your company is ever targeted during a cyber attack, your SOC will step in and try to get the situation under control. They will need to act very quickly so that the attack doesn’t escalate and that you don’t end up losing too much data or sensitive information.

If you have a solid SOC in place, then you should be able to prevent attacks from doing too much damage to your company’s data and IT network. Here are the necessary steps to take.

• First of all, you should mobilize your incident response team. They can then use the SIEM to initially detect and identify the attack and secondly to monitor it. It will very quickly detect and identify any running threats and vectors that need to be monitored, recorded and stabilized.
• Secure your whole IT network as soon as possible so that your business can continue to operate as usual. If the SOC quickly uses the SIEM, then the network will be able to be quickly stabilized. They might even need to isolate one section of the network and close that down so that the rest of the network can continue to operate without risk of being infected or compromised.
• You will need to inform all of your customers and clients whose data and information may have been affected as soon as you are aware of any security breaches. They certainly won’t be happy to hear this, so you might also have to act fast to manage your public relations.
• There is a good chance that you will have industry regulations to follow in the event of a cybersecurity attack. Your SOC team should already be aware of these regulations, and they will hopefully have already started to act on them. Failing to follow the regulations and best practices shortly after the attack could affect your company’s compliance.

How SOC Analysts Use The SIEM To Identify Information About The Culprit

Analytics can be used for a range of tasks within a company. For instance, they can help with brand strategy and marketing campaigns. But were you aware that your SOC analysts can use analytics from your SIEM tools to identify and analyze analytics from recent cybersecurity attacks? Using big data that your SIEM collects from attacks, your SOC analysts can then use detection analytic methods to identify who the attacker might have been. These analytics will also show the type of attack and any other malicious behaviors that you need to be aware of.

Lots of SIEM systems are also excellent at complex threat detection. From using all of the analytics that they collect over a historical period, they can learn which kinds of behaviors and actions can be considered regular and which can be identified as threats. These abnormal behaviors can then be quickly flagged and looked into further by the SOC analysts.

As you can see from reading through this blog post, a SIEM platform that is effectively configured and used to its maximum potential can help SOC teams identify potential threats before they even occur. Not only that, though, but the SIEM will also be a huge support to the SOC thanks to the wealth of data and analytics that it can provide security officers and analysts.

If you have any further questions regarding SIEMs and SOCs or would like any further information about these necessary cybersecurity resources, then feel free to get in touch with us today. One of our experienced team members will be able to tell you everything you need to know.

You should never take your business’s cybersecurity for granted. Establishing solid SIEMs and SOCs can ensure that you never unwittingly put the whole business at risk.