The Top 11 SIEM Solutions
Discover the top best SIEM solutions. Explore features such as data collection and analysis, threat detection, incident investigation, alerting, and centralized management.
Written by Caitlin Harris
Technical Review by Laura Iannini
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Exabeam Fusion SIEM
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IBM Security QRadar
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions enable organizations to improve their threat detection and incident response processes. They do this by aggregating and analyzing event data – this makes it easier for businesses to identify anomalous or malicious behavior.
There are two main types of SIEM: cloud SIEM solutions, and on-prem SIEM solutions. While the deployment of these tools differs, they work in much the same way. A SIEM tool collects event data from a company’s systems, applications, infrastructure, and endpoints, as well as contextual information such as regular user behaviors and existing threat intelligence. The solution will then centralize and normalize that data to make it more accessible. A SIEM tool can analyze this data in real time to identify unusual behaviors that could indicate the presence of a security threat.
The strongest SIEM solutions have robust reporting features, which provide security teams with detailed forensics of security incidents that they can use to inform and improve their incident response processes. They also offer analytics-based alerting, which notifies security teams of potential threats so that they can respond more quickly and efficiently, reducing the remediation time and—consequently—the damage the threat is able to cause.
As well as detecting security risks and enabling security teams to make data-driven decisions when it comes to incident response, SIEM tools can be used to demonstrate compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and SOX. They can also be used to keep track of data usage to help organizations manage their growth.
In this article, we’ll explore the top on-prem and cloud SIEM solutions designed to help your business identify and efficiently remediate cybersecurity threats. These solutions offer a range of capabilities, including data collection and analysis, threat detection, incident investigation, and alerting. We’ll give you some background information on the provider and the key features of each solution, as well as the type of customer that they are most suitable for.
Logmanager
Logmanager is a log management, SIEM, and observability platform that helps organizations streamline cybersecurity management and meet compliance standards. It enables centralized log collection, long-term storage, and log data analysis across your IT stack, allowing you to identify and resolve security incidents
Logmanager acts as a ‘lightweight’ SIEM; it’s easily deployable via a virtual or hardware SIEM appliance. Consistent data normalization ensures that log data is presented in a unified visualization pane, providing users with the information in an easily accessible way.
Logmanager Features:
- Aggregates logs from across your IT infrastructure, enabling centralized troubleshooting, observability, and security monitoring
- Comes with over 140 native integrations and allows for custom parsers via a no-code graphical programming interface
- Detects, analyzes, and prevents security threats with a lightweight SIEM platform
- Provides detailed analytics for detecting and responding to security threats, with pre-built dashboards and visualizations and customizable rules
- Offers a powerful and easy-to-use web interface, enabling deployment without dedicated expert or integration partner
- Enables the secure, immutable, long-term storage of log data for compliance reasons (GDPR, NIS2, ISO 27001, and more)
- Implements role-based access controls to ensure data integrity and confidentiality
Logmanager Pricing: Logmanager offers a tiered pricing model starting at $9 USD/month, billed annually, for up to 5 log sources, with unlimited number of users
Expert Insights’ Comments: Logmanager delivers simple setup, fast deployment, and easy ongoing management, with no code customization required. Its strong customer support and compliance capabilities make it ideal for small to mid-sized businesses, particularly in finance, healthcare, and government sectors where data security and regulatory compliance are crucial. We recommend Logmanager for organizations that need an easy-to-manage, efficient, and powerful security and log monitoring solution.
Logmanager
ManageEngine is the IT management division of Zoho Corporation and a provider of one of the broadest suites of IT management software in the industry. ManageEngine provide a range of custom-made and flexible solutions suited to companies of all sizes. ManageEngine Log360 is their unified SIEM solution capable of detecting, prioritizing, investigating, and responding to security threats with integrated DLP and CASB capabilities. This solution brings together machine learning-based anomaly detection, threat intelligence, and rule-based attack detection techniques to identify sophisticated attacks and remedy them via the incident management console.
ManageEngine Log360 Features
- Threat detection to guard the network against malicious intruders
- Attack detection to accurately identify security threats using rule-based real-time correlation, ML-based behavior analytics, and a MITRE ATT&CK framework
- Integrated DLP to reduce malicious communication and protect data using content-aware protection, file integrity monitoring, and data risk assessment
- Integrated CASN to regulate and keep track of access to sensitive data in the cloud
- Real-time security analytics for security and auditing
- Integrated compliance management
- Security and risk posture management for granular visibility into weak and risky configurations
ManageEngine Log360 Pricing: Pricing is available on request on the ManageEngine website. Fill in a form to receive a personalized quote tailored to your requirements.
Expert Insights’ Comments: ManageEngine Log360 is a powerful SIEM solution that provides users with holistic security visibility across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises networks. This solution is easy to implement and use with excellent customer support and is a strong SIEM solution capable of providing end-to-end incident management through actional intelligence. We would recommend ManageEngine Log360 to any organization looking for a solution with intuitive advanced security analytics and monitoring capabilities.
Heimdal is a Danish cybersecurity company that delivers AI-backed solutions to over 15,000 customers worldwide. The Heimdal Threat Hunting and Action Center is a robust SIEM solution that enables security leaders, operations teams, and MSPs to detect and respond to advanced threats. It provides users with a single platform to manage alerts, data, and security responses in real-time. This platform enhances visibility across an organization’s digital landscape, allowing users to proactively hunt and neutralize potential threats with context and assisted actioning.
Heimdal Threat-hunting & Action Center Features:
- A unified platform for managing data, alerts and security responses, with built in threat hunting capabilities
- Granular risk assessment across all endpoints and networks to enable faster response to threats
- Pre-computed risk scores, indicators, and detailed attack analysis, reducing alert fatigue and streamlining security operations
- Works seamlessly with Heimdal’s XDR tools, collating data from across the Heimdal platform
- Facilitates threat detection and tracking at a device level, using its XTP engine and the MITRE ATT&CK framework
- The Action Center enables quick decision-making and execution of commands, such as scanning, quarantining, and isolating threats with a single click
- Multiple investigative and insightful reports and views
- MSPs get a single, real-time platform to view all customers, with actionable security controls
Expert Insights’ Comments: The Heimdal Threat Hunting and Action Center caters to the needs of SecOps and IT professionals, security leaders, and managed security providers. This is a powerful solution for teams looking to reduce organizational risk, ensure compliance, reduce alert fatigue, and address security and skills gaps.
Exabeam Fusion SIEM
Exabeam is a cybersecurity provider dedicated to enhancing enterprise security stacks with actionable intelligence. Fusion SIEM (formerly SaaS Cloud) is a cloud-based solution designed to help security teams automate their threat detection and response processes, while minimizing alert fatigue and false positives for SOC teams. The platform also offers pre-packaged reporting to support PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOX, and GDPR compliance, as well as auditing requirements.
Exabeam Fusion SIEM Features:
- Machine learning-driven behavior analytics detects anomalous user and entity behaviors
- All activities are assigned a risk score dependent on how far they divert from “normal” behaviors, based on admin-configured UEBA rules
- UEBA scoring helps reduce false positives by enabling security teams to triage incidents according to severity
- Easy to deploy and manage with out-of-the-box configurations and an intuitive UI
Pricing And Plans: Pricing for Exabeam Fusion SIEM is available via contacting their sales team. The platform is priced based on the number of users and entities monitored, and is available on a term-based license.
Expert Insights’ Comments: We recommend Exabeam Fusion SIEM as a strong solution for larger enterprises looking for powerful behavior analytics to detect and remediate insider threats. Its modular delivery also makes Fusion SIEM suitable for companies looking to deploy individual modules to augment their existing SIEM solution with specific features.
Exabeam Fusion SIEM
IBM Security QRadar
IBM Security is a trusted provider of market-leading cybersecurity technologies for a range of use cases, including IT infrastructure and management, analytics, and software development. QRadar SIEM is IBM’s SIEM solution. Available on-premises and as a cloud-hosted solution, QRadar SIEM features in-depth analytics of logs, flows, and events, and generates actionable insights to inform security teams’ threat investigation and response processes.
IBM Security QRadar SIEM Features:
- Out-of-the-box integrations with 450 other third-party technologies, IBM solutions and open-source threat intelligence feeds make it easy for security teams to identify threats via one central interface
- Granular configuration options for automatic event data analysis and alert prioritization
- Actionable insights based on security event data inform and improve threat investigation processes to minimize mean time to respond
Pricing And Plans: The overall cost of QRadar SIEM is dependent on the deployment model (SaaS or on-prem software) and add-ons, and is based on the number of servers, and number of users or workstations in your environment. Plans start from $1,270, and you can estimate your pricing using the tool on IBM’s website.
Expert Insights’ Comments: We recommend QRadar SIEM for mid-size to large organizations looking for a SIEM that will integrate easily with their existing infrastructure to provide a holistic, accurate view of their attack surface.
IBM Security QRadar
LogPoint SIEM
LogPoint is a European cybersecurity company that focuses on helping organizations convert their data into actionable intelligence. LogPoint SIEM is their flagship SIEM solution. The platform offers integrated User and Event Behavior Analytics (UEBA) to accurately detect anomalous activities and offer risk-based threat prioritization, as well as built-in Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) functionality to reduce incident response times.
LogPoint SIEM Features:
- Visualizes all event data and maps security events to MITRE to help security teams more efficiently prioritize alerts and incident responses
- Integrated SOAR functionality automates menial tasks and certain incident response processes using out-of-the-box integrations and playbooks
- Integrated UEBA analyzes user and entity behaviors to identify malicious activity based on deviation from a baseline of “normal” behavior
- Customer-focused, LogPoint offers strong technical support and updates their solutions in response to customer feedback (e.g., adding SOAR capabilities)
- Flexible SaaS, cloud, and on-prem deployment options, with multi-instance deployments for MSPs and organizations whose “parent” headquarters support multiple “child” business areas
Pricing And Plans: Pricing is available on request via Logpoint’s website, and licensing is based on the number of connected devices.
Expert Insights’ Comments: LogPoint is a strong solution for any sized organization—including those with smaller security teams—looking for an easy-to-manage SIEM with lots of out-of-the-box functionality. We also recommend it to those looking for powerful SOAR capabilities to automate incident response and reduce alert fatigue. The platform’s native multi-tenant support and multi-instance deployment option also make it suitable for MSPs.
LogPoint SIEM
LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Platform
LogRhythm is a cybersecurity provider that specializes in threat intelligence, security analytics, log management and network monitoring. LogRhythm’s NextGen SIEM platform offers machine learning-based behavior analytics, network detection and response, and SOAR capabilities via a single, central platform to help organizations gain a more holistic view of their attack surface and rapidly detect and remediate security threats.
LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Platform Features:
- Granular levels of customization available across the entire platform
- Configure the sources for any log to ensure the accurate capture of all event data
- Configure alerts and create custom reporting templates to enable maximum visibility, reduce alert fatigue, and ensure compliance
- Real-time analysis of events and logs and compatibility with a wide variety of log sources
- Deploys on-prem, in IaaS, or through an MSP; LogRhythm also offers a cloud-hosted SIEM—LogRhythm Cloud—for organizations that want the flexibility of a SaaS solution
Pricing And Plans: Pricing is available from the LogRhythm sales team upon request.
Expert Insights’ Comments: We recommend LogRhythm’s NextGen SIEM Platform to mid- to large-sized organizations looking to deploy a SIEM on-premises or in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service model, and those looking for highly flexible customization options to tailor the SIEM to their specific environment. LogRhythm has a wide channel of MSP partners, so the solution is also suitable for organizations that would like to invest in a SIEM as a managed service.
LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Platform
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Rapid7 is a cybersecurity company that specializes in solutions to improve security through visibility, analytics, and automation. InsightIDR is Rapid7’s combined SIEM and XDR platform, delivered via the Rapid7 Insight platform alongside the vendor’s threat intelligence, orchestration and automation, vulnerability management, application, and cloud security tools, as well as their managed services. InsightIDR customers that choose to invest in any of the other Insight solutions can access all features via one platform.
Rapid7 InsightIDR Features:
- The user-friendly interface makes it easy for security teams to access threat intelligence to inform their incident response processes
- In-built detection and response tools help streamline response workflows to remediate threats more efficiently
- Accessible threat forensics help security teams quickly respond, as well as take steps to prevent repeat incidents
- A range of out-of-the-box configurations makes it easy to deploy, but admins can adapt these to fit their environment as needed
Pricing And Plans: Deployed as-a-Service, InsightIDR is available via three tiered packages on a termly license, and pricing is based on the number of assets being monitored. InsightIDR Essential is available from $3.82/asset/month; InsightIDRAdvanced is available from $6.36/asset/month; InsightIDR Ultimate is available from $8.21/asset/month (based on 250k assets).
Expert Insights’ Comments: We recommend InsightIDR for small- to mid-sized organizations looking for a cloud-hosted SIEM, and particularly those with fewer security resources and may benefit from the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and orchestration and response add-ons offered by Rapid7.
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Securonix Unified Defense SIEM
Securonix is a security analytics and operation management provider that helps organizations better understand and utilize their big data to remediate cyberthreats. Unified Defense SIEM is Securonix’s cloud-native SIEMs solution. The platform enables security teams to detect and analyze threats using machine learning-based behavioral analytics, threat chain analytics, and user risk scoring, as well as efficiently respond to threats with integrated SOAR functionality and automated response playbooks.
Securonix Unified Defense SIEM Features:
- Out-of-the-box integrations with third-party threat intelligence platforms, Securonix’s own native threat intelligence platform, helps security teams to turn event data into useful, actionable intelligence
- Risk scoring of all users and entities helps teams to prioritize their incident response actions
- Threat models map alerts to the MITRE ATT&CK and US-CERT frameworks to help reduce alert volume
- Modular architecture enables flexible deployment options
Pricing And Plans: Securonix’s solution is available to deploy on-prem or as-a-Service. Pricing is available through contact with their sales team, and Securonix offers perpetual licenses as well as term licenses.
Expert Insights’ Comments: We recommend the Securonix Unified Defense SIEM primarily to mid-size and larger organizations that have security resource they can dedicate to the deployment and ongoing management of the solution. However, smaller customers can also leverage Securonix’s SIEM if they opt to buy via an MSP that will help them manage it.
Securonix Unified Defense SIEM
Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM
Sumo Logic is a data analytics company that focuses on collecting and analyzing machine data for security, operations, and business intelligence use cases. They offer event and log management and analytics solutions that help organizations make data-driven decisions. Cloud SIEM is Sumo Logic’s cloud-native SIEM solution designed to identify threats across on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud sources.
Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Features:
- Integrates via API with multiple sources, including security tools such as VMWare Carbon Black, OKTA, AWS GuardDuty, and Microsoft 365, making it easier for security teams to gain a holistic view of their attack surface
- Out-of-the-box rules relate events to the MITRE ATT&CK framework to help security teams triage and prioritize threats
- Free training and certification included, with helpful product documentation
- User-friendly, easy-to-navigate interface makes it easy to identify threats and vulnerabilities
Pricing And Plans: Licensing for Sumo Logic’s Cloud SIEM is tiered and either subscription-based, with pricing based on data ingestion volume, or credit-based. The SIEM is available via the Enterprise Security and Enterprise Suite versions of SumoLogic’s wider platform.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Because of its flexible packing and pricing options, we recommend Sumo Logic as a strong cloud-based SIEM for organizations of all sizes looking to improve their threat detection and streamline their incident response processes.
Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM
Splunk Enterprise Security
Splunk is a software provider that provides tools to help organizations collect, monitor, search and analyze their data. Splunk Enterprise Security is their cloud SIEM designed to make it easier for security teams to investigate malicious activity across their environments, thus reducing the time it takes to respond to threats.
Features
- User-friendly web interface provides a holistic view of any organization’s entire environment
- Wide range of integrations with third-party tools, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure,
- Reliable threat detection capabilities with mapping to frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK, NIST, CIS 20, and Kill Chain
- Risk-based alerting attributes risks to users and systems and triggers alerts only when the risk threshold is reached, to minimize alert fatigue
- Visual risk analysis reports make threat intelligence accessible for non-technical users
- Available on, prem, as-a-Service and can also be deployed via the Splunk Cloud
Pricing: Licensing is subscription-based, and tiered pricing options are available based on infrastructure and data ingestion volume to align with different customer use cases.
Expert Insights’ Comments: We recommend Splunk Enterprise Security as a strong solution for mid- to large-sized organizations looking for a flexible, scalable SIEM with the option to add on UEBA and SOAR functionality. However, organizations in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America looking for a cloud-hosted SIEM may need to check whether the Splunk Cloud supports their location and geographical requirements for data residency.
Splunk Enterprise Security
FAQs
Everything You Need To Know About SIEM Solutions (FAQs)
SIEM stands for “security information and event management”. These solutions enable you to collate and manage security information and events. They aggregate and analyze security and event data, making it easier for IT teams to identify anomalous behaviour that could indicate that their network has been breached.
The best SIEM solutions don’t just offer logs of event data, they also carry out comprehensive analysis of the data, alert IT teams to unusual behavior, and provide them with detailed context of any security incidents that will help them identify the root cause of the incident. This data makes it much easier to carry out accurate remediation procedures. While SIEM tools themselves don’t usually offer incident response functionality, they often offer integrations with third-party tools (such as SOAR solutions) to help the IT and security team orchestrate remediation actions efficiently, based on data they’ve received from their SIEM tool.
A SIEM solution deploys agents to aggregate log and event data from various sources across your organization’s IT environment, including networks, host systems, infrastructure, applications and endpoints, as well as third-party security tools. The agents forward this data to a central repository, where the platform normalizes it to make it easier for your security team to compare security information from different sources that may have originally been presented in different formats.
Once normalized, the SIEM tool analyzes the security data in real-time to detect anomalous behaviors that could indicate the presence of a security threat. If suspicious behaviors are detected, the SIEM solution sends security alerts to your SOC team, along with contextual information that can help the team carry out a forensic investigation of those behaviors. This knowledge can help security teams remediate threats more quickly and effectively.
As well as data aggregation, real-time monitoring and threat detection, the strongest SIEM tools provide security orchestration capabilities such as threat response workflow automation, which enable security teams to automate menial tasks so they can focus their human resource on active remediation. They sometimes also offer suggestions as to how a security team should respond to individual incidents, based on a risk assessment of each incident and a triaging process that prioritizes alerts according to their severity.
There are three main benefits to using SIEM systems: first, they enable you to proactively detect threats to your environment; second, they help make your incident response processes more efficient; and third, and make it easier to keep on top of compliance requirements. Here’s how:
Proactive Threat Detection
SIEM tools proactively collect data from across your organization’s entire infrastructure and centralize it, giving your security team a central, holistic view of all security events across your IT environment. This means that they’re much more likely to pick up on security incidents that may otherwise get lost in a sea of noise.
As well as collecting and logging event data, modern SIEM solutions use machine learning-based analytics to analyze that data for anomalous and potentially malicious activity. This helps SOC teams identify and respond to threats before they can cause damage, rather than becoming aware of them much later in the attack timeline, and only because of the disruption caused.
Finally, SIEM solutions also help organizations to prevent future threats. By combining log and event data with contextual threat intelligence, they’re able to provide a timeline of each attack, helping your security team to determine how the initial breach occurred and how the attack spread. This enables them to make informed decisions on how to improve your organization’s security infrastructure to prevent repeat incidents in the future.
Efficient Incident Response
Security incident response is one of the most commonly-cited areas of skill shortage in the cybersecurity industry—and the lack of knowledge in this space means that it often takes organizations longer that it should to identify and respond to threats, simply because they don’t have the right resource available. In fact, it takes an average of 287 days to identify and contain a data breach—that means, if your systems were breached in January, the average organization wouldn’t be able to contain that breach until October, giving the attacker a lot of time to damage and steal data.
By detecting and analyzing threats automatically, a SIEM solution can help to greatly reduce the time it takes your security team to detect and respond to an incident. The team is told what the incident is and how severe a security risk it poses, enabling them to focus their efforts on the remediation process, rather than getting bogged down sifting through data stores, searching for anomalies. Some SIEM tools also allow admins to configure the automatic remediation of certain threat types.
But that isn’t the only way that SIEM solutions help make your organization’s incident response processes more efficient; they can also reduce the amount of time your SOC team spends barking up the wrong tree. False positives account for 45% of all security alerts, and take just as long to investigate as actual attacks. By analyzing each anomaly and assigning it a risk score, SIEM tools help security teams work out which alerts are genuine threats that need to be investigated, and which are false alarms.
Compliance
In recent years, many organizations have been put under pressure by industry and regulatory bodies to meet—and prove that they are meeting—certain standards designed to ensure the protection of their data, their employees’ data and their customers’ data.
A SIEM solution can also help your organization to prove that it’s meeting industry and regulatory compliance requirements by generating reports—both scheduled and in real-time—of data logs and security events. Instead of having to collect and normalize that data manually for an audit, your security team can simply log into their SIEM tool’s central dashboard and generate the necessary reports in a matter of minutes.
While SIEM solutions have many benefits, there are also a few challenges that come with using one:
- Lengthy implementation processes. SIEM tools can take a long time to deploy because they have to integrate with each part of an organization’s IT infrastructure. Because of this, many smaller organizations—or those with less available security resource—choose to outsource their SIEM to a managed security services provider (MSSP), which takes care of the deployment and ongoing management of the solution for them.
- Alert fatigue caused by false positives. This challenge is often one faced by organizations that don’t give their SIEM solution feedback on the alerts it provides them, or those that haven’t configured the behavior profiles properly to reflect their IT environment. When properly configured, a SIEM tool should help to reduce false positives by assigning a risk score to each incident, and triaging incidents based on the threat they pose.
- Cost. The initial cost of a SIEM tool can be in the thousands of dollars, from purchasing the tool itself to paying the security staff to maintain it. While this cost is still significantly less than the average cost of a data breach—which currently stands at $4.62 million—some organizations may not be able to afford it all at once. These companies should consider investing in a SIEM solution as-a-Service, which allows them to pay for it via a regular subscription, or using an MSP or MSSP that will bundle SIEM services in with a wider security offering.
The two main groups that would benefit from adopting a SIEM solution are larger, enterprise organizations and MSPs.
As SIEMs make it easier to manage a network’s security status, and respond to incidents faster, they can be a valuable asset to enterprises. It is the size and amount of data to be processed that make SIEMs an effective solution.
MSPs can also stand to benefit from having SIEM as it aggregates and prioritizes data from multiple sources. This is extremely helpful when managing multiple networks. MSPs can also use SIEM solutions to generate reports that detail all network data and intel. These reports can also deliver reporting on their customers’ compliance for auditing purposes when ask by regulatory bodies.
All modern SIEM solutions should enable security teams to detect and investigate threats, as well as automate incident response processes. But there are other features that you should look for in a SIEM solution, depending on your use case. These include:
- Visualization of threat intelligence and event data, to enable you to understand your attack surface more easily
- Incident triaging, to help you prioritize which incidents require attention most urgently
- Advanced machine learning-based analytics that identifies abnormal behavior across your environment
- Unlimited, quick log collection
- Data normalization, to make it easier for you to understand and compare data from different sources
- Threat response workflow automation, which enables you to automate menial tasks and focus on remediation
Many SIEM providers offer both on-premises and cloud deployment options, and it can be difficult to know which one to go with. There are a few areas to consider when making this decision:
- Deployment: It can be more difficult to deploy an on-premises solution, as it’s likely to take more time to integrate with your existing architecture. A cloud SIEM solution is quicker and easier to deploy, and the provider will often help you manage the deployment and ongoing maintenance of the platform.
- Control: On-premises SIEM solutions enable organizations to have full control over their own data. Cloud SIEM solutions, however, involve your company’s data being stored on the provider’s servers; this may be in their own cloud or in a public cloud. Some organizations are required by compliance regulations to keep a record of any data they store in the cloud, which can be time-consuming and may mean that an on-prem deployment is the better option.
- Scalability: On-premises solutions are often cheaper to deploy initially, but it can be difficult to upgrade them if your business grows or starts processing more data than you originally budgeted for. Cloud solutions are much easier to scale because they’re usually delivered on a subscription-based license and enable you to add or remove features as needed, with immediate effect.
- Accessibility: Cloud SIEM solutions are much easier for remote and hybrid teams to access than on-premises ones, as security teams can sign in to and manage the SIEM securely from anywhere, at any time.
- Updates: Organizations that invest in an on-premises SIEM solution are responsible for updating that solution themselves. Administering these updates can often be time-consuming and require you to pause log collection, resulting in down-time. Those that invest in cloud SIEM solutions needn’t worry about this, as updates are usually managed by the provider.
Generally, if your business isn’t restricted by compliance and privacy requirements that require you to have certain controls over your data, we recommend that you invest in a cloud SIEM solution. But ultimately, you need to evaluate which of the above points are most important to your organization, and make your decision based on those factors.
The main challenge when it comes to using a SIEM solution is navigating false alerts and reducing alert fatigue—the action of becoming desensitized to alerts because you’re constantly overwhelmed with false positives.
To overcome this, you should look for a SIEM that gives you contextual information on each incident, enables you to configure custom log and alert rules to help reduce false positives, and assigns risk scores to each incident or offers triaging to help you prioritize your responses.
There are a lot of things to think about when implementing a SIEM security solution. Here’s our checklist of actions that will help your SIEM implementation go more smoothly and ensure you set up your solution as effectively as possible:
- Scope your implementation. You need to understand what your use case is for using a SIEM solution, and outline how your organization should benefit from the deployment. That involves defining which logs the SIEM solution will monitor and which compliance requirements your chosen tool must support.
- Choose a deployment option. Most SIEM tools offer a variety of deployment options, including on-prem, cloud, SaaS, or any of the above but via an MSSP. The option you choose will depend on your budget, available security resource, ability to manage the solution in-house, and need for control over data residency.
- Configure correlation rules. SIEM software usually comes with pre-configured correlation rules that outline “normal” and “abnormal” behaviors, but your security team should check and fine-tune these to your environment to help mitigate the risk of false positives.
- Identify compliance requirements. You should already have checked that your chosen SIEM solution supports any compliance requirements that your businesses needs to adhere to but, once you’ve implemented your solution, you need to configure your reports to provide dashboards on the necessary compliance standards in real-time.
- Fine-tune your setup. You should regularly fine-tune your SIEM configurations to help the solution learn what behaviors are normal for your environment and enable it to detect genuine threats more effectively.
- Implement and test your incident response plan. Make sure your organization has planned exactly how it will respond to security incidents that your SIEM alerts you to.
Written By
Caitlin Harris is Deputy Head of Content at Expert Insights. Caitlin is an experienced writer and journalist, with years of experience producing award-winning technical training materials and journalistic content. Caitlin holds a First Class BA in English Literature and German, and provides our content team with strategic editorial guidance as well as carrying out detailed research to create articles that are accurate, engaging and relevant. Caitlin co-hosts the Expert Insights Podcast, where she interviews world-leading B2B tech experts.
Technical Review
Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.