Cybercrime is growing worldwide, and it’s more important than ever to make sure your company’s data is protected. Even a single security breach can cost any sized business an average of $200,000. Security information and event management (SIEM) software provides tools and analytics to protect business networks from breaches. 

To find the perfect SIEM software for your business, use our Product Selection Tool by clicking on the banner at the top of this page. After answering a few questions, you’ll get a short list of software tailored to your company’s needs.

Best SIEM tools by deployment type

Cloud Only	Cloud & On-Premise
Splunk	Exabeam
Rapid7IDR	LogRhythm
Sumo Logic	IBM QRadar

Table of Contents

What is SIEM software?

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SIEM software is a set of tools that combines security event management (SEM) with security information management (SIM) to detect and respond to threats that breach a network. The system aggregates data from all of the devices on a network to determine when and where a breach is happening. This way, the IT team can respond more quickly and contain the breach before it does any more damage.

SIEM software typically includes:

• Data aggregation: gathering data from multiple sources (in this case, security software) and consolidating it into a more digestible format
• Normalization: taking raw data from a security log and formatting it in a way humans can understand
• Algorithmic monitoring: surveillance that uses algorithms to make educated guesses and automate the decision making process
• Alerts of threats: providing alerts to the security team when the software detects unusual activity
• Response capabilities: communicating with other security software, like firewalls or EDR tools, to block malicious activity or sever unauthorized connections
• Reporting/forensics: detailed reports on threats, including what happened, where the breach originated, and results of the attack to strengthen the network and remove and report threats

Who uses SIEM software?

Enterprise companies with a large number of devices on their networks purchase SIEM tools, allowing them to pull data from hardware, operating systems, applications, and security tools to monitor the network in real time. These companies also dedicate IT personnel to maintaining the system, monitoring for threats, and responding to those threats. The software’s scope and resource requirements mean that it’s not a practical option for most small businesses. Additionally, the software can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year, making it cost prohibitive for many small businesses.

Common features in SIEM tools

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Many SIEM tools share common features to provide better security. Look for these when you’re choosing SIEM software for your business.

Threat detection

SIEM software specializes in helping businesses detect threats on their network. It gathers thousands of data points from all of the devices, operating systems, security software, and applications on your network—including user behavior—to identify abnormal activities. SIEM software keeps logs of device activity, including sites that are visited or applications that are accessed, and uses those logs to flag unusual activity. When these anomalies are detected, the system sends alerts to the IT team, so they can analyze the issue and contain any potential threats. Most systems handle threat detection in real time.

Also read: Top 5 Security-as-a-Service Providers

Real-time monitoring

Real-time monitoring is essential to getting the most up-to-date information about your network. It significantly reduces the delays between when the threat occurs and when your SIEM system picks it up. Real-time monitoring provides faster detection, so any real threats can be detained before they can access much data. When the software detects a threat, it sends an alert to the security team, allowing them to investigate or isolate the threat quickly. 

Real-time monitoring takes up a lot of computing power, which is another reason SIEM tools tend to be so expensive. By contrast, tools that don’t monitor in real time typically batch their monitoring. This means that security software might only run sweeps of the network every few hours or once a day, which leaves hours of unmonitored time where threats could gain access.

Response

While SIEM software can’t stop threats on its own, it can communicate with your other security tools to block, contain, or remove threats. While an attack is still in progress, the SIEM detects the threat and then gives your other security tools (firewalls, endpoint protection, mobile device management, etc.) instructions to keep the threat from spreading. Because SIEM software pulls data from so many different locations, it can identify the threats that your other security tools may have missed.

SIEM software also includes threat hunting features to track the malicious activity and make it easier for the security team and other tools to find and remove the problem. This speeds up your incident response time and prevents breaches from causing as much damage.

Investigation tools

Along with detecting threats, a solid SIEM software should also provide investigation tools, like event log correlation and log forwarding. These tools help your IT team investigate the threat, the response, and the outcome of the event, so you can prevent it in the future. Event log correlation transforms data from your event logs into insights that give more context to incidents and make them easier to resolve, while log forwarding sends incident logs to other applications for further analysis. These features work together to provide more thorough investigations. 

By gathering data on an incident, your SIEM tools can help analyze and determine whether multiple failed logins was a true breach attempt or simply that someone forgot their password. Investigation tools can also help you improve your defenses against future attacks by learning about vulnerabilities that led to past breaches.

Forensics

Similar to investigation tools, forensics helps your IT team analyze and investigate an incident. However, forensics prioritizes the who, what, and when of a breach, if necessary, rather than investigating for the sake of strengthening the network. Because the forensics might become part of a police investigation, they must adhere to strict specifications. Forensics tools must: 

• Be immutable
• Limit who can access the data 
• Collect data in a tamper-proof form 

For forensics to be valid, they have to show exactly what happened surrounding the breach, who took what actions, and what the result of those actions were. By ensuring the data is immutable, investigators have greater confidence in the information and can use it to find the culprit. This type of forensics can be extremely valuable for both financial institutions and government entities to identify and investigate espionage, embezzlement, or theft. With these tools, IT teams can find out where the threat originated, how much data it accessed, and any damage it caused before it was contained.

Behavioral analytics

SIEM tools with behavioral analytics can help your IT team make sure that only authorized personnel and devices are accessing your network. While user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) currently exists as a standalone product, it’s already incorporated into many SIEM platforms and may only come as a package deal in the future. Many companies who use SIEM software also employ zero-trust models, meaning they only allow access to users and devices that the security team has verified. However, even if the credentials have been verified, the activity still needs to be monitored.

SIEM software can flag abnormal behaviors from verified users and catch anomalies before they turn into actual breaches. Let’s say one of your employees suddenly accesses high-value data in the middle of the night from a strange location. Any one of those factors may trigger an alert, but the SIEM system would likely surface all three together as a high priority alert. You may be able to customize your SIEM tool to automatically block certain actions, like downloading files from a USB drive or accessing sensitive data sets, until the user receives admin approval. Using these behavioral analytics, you can also figure out where breaches originated.

Most companies have started to include behavioral analytics powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in their SIEM platforms because it reveals information such as who is accessing a business’s network. AI and machine learning can look at behavior to quickly determine if someone is who they say they are. As SIEM software continues to grow, we expect to see this trend to continue and behavioral analytics to become mainstream in the world of SIEM tools.

Best SIEM software 2020

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Looking for the best SIEM software for your business? This comparison chart provides further insight into ten vendors to give you a better idea of how each product will work.

Product Name	Real-time Monitoring	Endpoint Management	Behavioral Analytics	Compliance Reporting
Exabeam	no	no	yes	yes
IBM QRadar	yes	yes	yes	no
LogRhythm	yes	yes	yes	yes
Netsurion EventTracker	yes	yes	yes	yes
Rapid7 InsightIDR	yes	yes	yes	no
Securonix	yes	yes	yes	yes
SolarWinds Security Event Manager	yes	no	no	yes
Splunk	yes	yes	yes	yes
Sumo Logic	yes	no	yes	yes

Most companies have started to include behavioral analytics powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in their SIEM platforms because it reveals information such as who is accessing a business’s network. AI and machine learning can look at behavior to quickly determine if someone is who they say they are. As SIEM software continues to grow, we expect to see this trend to continue and behavioral analytics to become mainstream in the world of SIEM tools.

For an overview of some of these top products, check out this video: 

• • Which SIEM software is right for you?
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Benefits of SIEM tools

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While SIEM software is expensive, it comes with a variety of benefits to keep your business network secure.

Automated response protocols

Many SIEM tools allow you to automate repetitive or labor-intensive tasks, like continuous monitoring and malware scanning, so your IT team can focus on using their expertise where it counts. You can set rulesets within the system to flag and halt suspicious behaviors. For example, you might temporarily want to lock the account of a user that tries to access data at odd hours or block new devices logging onto the network until your security team can verify them. When one of these security rules is triggered, the system automatically sends an alert to your security team and initiates the response protocols.

Additionally, you might want to integrate your SIEM software with next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) to stop breaches or data loss prevention (DLP) tools to prevent IP theft. Integrating SIEM with other software increases the number of response protocols you can automate, improving your overall response time.

Also read: Cybersecurity Trends in 2020: Artificial Intelligence

Faster detection and response

Because SIEM software monitors your network in real time and does so faster than a human, you get faster detection and response times when there are incidents in your network. Not only does the software not need to take breaks, but it also keeps historical data readily available and can quickly cross-reference code with any known malware signatures. 

SIEM tools with AI can also lower the number of false positives and provide risk assessments, so your IT team only has to worry about incidents that could actually cause harm. For example, a single incorrect password entry might cause an alert in the first couple of months after implementation. However, as the AI learns and sees how your security team responds to these threats, it will have a better understanding of what actually constitutes a threat for your business, allowing it to reduce the number of alerts for employees accidentally entering the wrong credentials.

Deeper investigations

SIEM software collects data from all of the hardware, applications, operating systems, and security tools on your network, providing more context to the investigations and giving you more information to strengthen your network. SIEM software consolidates firewall logs, web filtering logs, threat intelligence, and user authentication information, so your security team can examine and compare the data to find vulnerabilities. The added data also makes investigations easier because there are fewer dots to connect to determine exactly how a breach occurred. The system organizes the data in one central location and provides easy accessibility for your entire security team. This large amount of information also simplifies compliance investigations for businesses in heavily-regulated industries.

The future of security information management

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SIEM technology has already been around for over a decade, but it continues to provide invaluable knowledge and insights for enterprise businesses. SIEM software was developed to keep businesses compliant with security regulations, but today’s SIEM software speeds up threat detection and improves investigations.

As cybercrime rises, IT security professionals face higher levels of stress and more work. In fact, 66 percent of people working in IT say they’ve considered looking for a job with less stress, and 51 percent would even take a paycut to do so. As security analysts and IT administrators face higher levels of burnout, next-generation SIEM software is expected to simplify their jobs and reduce their workload. As SIEM software evolves, more vendors are expected to include SOAR capabilities, allowing the tool to respond to minor threats without needing help from your security team. This is meant to remove some of the strain on your security administrators, allowing them to focus on severe threats

The future of security information management and SIEM software uses AI and machine learning to improve the detection of suspicious activity and simplify IT security investigations. Not only can AI capabilities accelerate detection, but they can also automate tasks, reduce the number of false positives security teams have to deal with, and identify abnormalities in user behavior. While some tools today include these features, the ones that don’t will include them before long due to the extra functionality and improved detection rates. Additionally, the software options that currently include AI will continue to fine-tune and improve these features to provide better service and security.

Choosing SIEM software for your business

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When choosing the best SIEM software for your business, it’s important to consider which factors you need the most. While cloud-based software might work well for some companies, if you’re in a heavily-regulated industry, you may need on-premise software to maintain more control. There are tons of different SIEM tools out there, but luckily, you don’t have to handle all of the research on your own.

To find the right SIEM software for your business, use our Product Selection Tool by clicking on the banner below. After answering a short survey, you’ll get a list of software vendors customized to meet the needs of your company.

• • Which SIEM software is right for you?
  • Find out now