SIEM And Threat Intelligence: Enhancing Detection And Response Capabilities

Cyber security threats are becoming more severe. The frequency of Cyberattacks is also increasing. Meanwhile, cyber professionals are dealing with a hefty lot of unsecured data. Hence, they are always vulnerable to attacks. 

Consequently, we see numerous parallel attacks on data. Often, the attackers target access logs. They may also launch suspicious activity through malware and siphon data. 

However, it is not possible to sift through all this data. It would be seriously time-consuming and require a lot of money and manpower.

Many organizations seek help from Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) solutions and integrated threat intelligence to address this. These solutions aggregate and analyze unusual activity that may point to attacks. They assist with prioritization and incident responses, enabling security teams to solve the most urgent problems more quickly. 

The Role Of The SIEM

If your organization struggles to stay on top of the massive volumes of security alerts that come in every day, you may need something to sift through the noise.

Although it’s essential to be aware of everything that’s going on in your environment, there are benefits to a solution that can sort alert data based on type and priority. 

SIEM solutions collect raw security data from various sources. And then analyzes it. The solutions can also filter and streamline external threats.

So you have to attend to fewer alerts. Instead, you can identify and attend to a group of similar alerts. So you can deal with a cluster of similar attacks at a go. In conclusion, it saves a lot of time. It also boosts productivity.

There are a few valuable functions of the SIEM:

• Data collection. When there is an event or unusual activity detected around your application or network, the SIEM logs it and alerts security teams. However, the SIEM will group verify similar data points to show better patterns and reduce noise. 
• Eliminate clutter. Aggregation will make it easier for you to address high-priority alerts, and responding quickly means you are less likely to suffer a damaging attack. You and your security team can define rules for security incidents so that the SIEM can pinpoint unusual behavior. SIEMs also have defaults, so you aren’t building all your rules from scratch.
• Compliance assistance. SIEM benefits your organization’s security but is also helpful for things like PCI DSS compliance and other security standards. Since you could be penalized following a successful attack, fast threat detection and strong response capabilities are essential to your organization’s success. 

Essential for centralizing visibility and cutting down on alert volumes, SIEM is a highly effective tool for improving threat detection and your organization’s response. When there is a sea of data, it can be challenging to determine what is essential and what is noise or low-priority. 

How Threat Intelligence Improves Detection

Without knowing what you’re looking at, though, all the data aggregation in the world can’t help you make optimal decisions. SIEM solutions and threat intelligence can work together to identify attack precursors quickly. Hence all organisations can find out the malicious activity patterns in no time. 

Threat intelligence is the collection and interpretation of data that helps you understand your attackers. Threat intelligence can determine the attacker’s capabilities and strategies by analyzing the attacker’s behavior. In many cases, threat intelligence can tease out the attacker’s motive.

This information means you can effectively prioritize potential threats and respond to the highest-risk activity. SIEM may indicate several looming threats, but threat intelligence can narrow that further by indicating which attack would significantly impact your organization. 

Security teams can prioritize issues and protect your applications and network with this information. Combining threat intelligence and SIEM security data enables the security team to find and address security threats far more quickly and appropriately than manual effort. 

Maximizing the Value of the SIEM and Threat Intelligence

To get the most out of SIEM, make sure you choose a solution that is fully integrated with threat intelligence. The integration combines the strengths of each, ensuring that you receive the most accurate and informative reports from SIEM. 

Some fine-tuning will be required. You should select security tools with threat intelligence integration, and then you will have to configure SIEMs with the correct data feeds to optimize threat detection and response. The appropriate data feeds will depend on your organization and industry, so make sure you choose the most relevant information for you. 

Additional security tools can be helpful as well. Application and network security tools that fully integrate with the SIEM you choose can help prevent and mitigate attacks. While the SIEM is highly effective at threat detection and facilitating your response, other tools like WAF, DDoS protection, and RASP can aid your response. 

Although your monitoring tools constantly note potential threats (and possibly spamming you with notifications and alerts), this raw data alone is insufficient to keep you informed. Tools like SIEM and integrated threat intelligence are helpful to get a clearer picture. They can help you parse the data you receive and group similar alerts, ultimately saving you time and improving your responses to the threats. 

Other Benefits

Let’s explore some more critical benefits of SIEM and Threat Intelligence integration.

Threat detection in real-time 

The integration of threat intelligence with SIEM increases its capabilities significantly. Firstly, it helps cross-reference internal data with external feedback from threat intelligence. It also allows organizations to identify patterns and differences which they would have ignored otherwise. 

Consequently, the companies can detect the vulnerabilities faster and act upon them. They can also identify new malware before it attacks the system. At the same time, they can prevent the targeted attacks. 

Makes the defense more proactive

Secondly, I feel the SIEM integration makes the defense more proactive. 

Identifying new techniques to fight the existing threats is no big deal. Instead, organizations can use SIEM integration to detect unwanted elements in the system environment. Hence, they can stall cyber attacks easily. 

Incident response

However, I feel that the most prominent benefit of this integration between TI and SIEM is improved incident response. SIEM creates an events timeline till the breach. At the same time, threat intelligence collects data about the TTPs of potential attackers and related IOCs. 

In this way, an organization can accelerate and improve the investigation and its outcome. 

Ready for an improved defense?

The digital landscape is becoming more complex day by day. Threat intelligence cannot develop a combat strategy alone. Most importantly, the threats are also evolving. So, the SIEM integration is needed. The SIEM solutions bring vital tools for better insights and coverage to the table. 

Now, the integrated approach can launch real-time threat detection with productive defense strategies. Consequently, the incident response will be spot on. 

This integrated approach can also improve the overall cyber security defense and conceal sensitive data. Once the rate of data leakage drops, malware cannot attack your system frequently. 

So, every company taking cyber security seriously should consider integrating SIEM and threat intelligence.

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