Is SIEM Technology Really Effective?

With a staggering 291 records per second compromised in the first half of 2018 alone, according to the Breach Level Index, it’s explicitly clear that small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) must get serious about executing proactive attack-prevention. Without it, they risk a data breach that could lead to complete financial ruin.
One of these data-breach prevention tactics is Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) technology. This critical tool gives companies the ability to monitor, detect, correlate and quickly respond to threat activity across their entire IT infrastructure. Cybersecurity Insiders, on behalf of AlienVault, recently conducted one of the most comprehensive information surveys on SIEM to date. The 2019 SIEM Report found an impressive 76% of business respondents noted a measurable reduction in breach activity through the use of SIEM technology. Here is a breakdown of the report’s findings and how IT teams are confirming that SIEM delivers on its core value.
Benefits
Organizations name SIEM’s power to quickly detect and respond to security incidents as its most important benefit. They also say SIEM delivers on its promise of creating efficiencies in overall security operations, improving prioritization of indicators of compromise and compliance postures, as well as greater threat visibility and analysis.
Key Use Cases
The most notable utilization of SIEM according to the report is monitoring, correlation and analysis of threats across multiple systems and applications at 68%, while identifying external and internal threats is the next highest use case at 62%.
Threat Detection Rate and Speed
Companies ranked SIEM’s ability to detect unauthorized access as its most effective use at 46%. Advanced persistent threats were a close second at 42%, while insider attacks came in third at 37%.
The survey also found SIEM was able to detect a remarkable eight out of ten compromises within hours, and half of those within minutes of infiltration.
Obstacles
The survey does show there are several hurdles to maximizing the total value of a SIEM platform. The biggest of which is the lack of skilled IT professionals to operate it effectively, while having to manually create and refine rules, too many false positives and lack of budget were also listed.
This is where managed-security providers, like Protelligent^®, can level the playing field. Not only do they put SIEM technology within reach for SMB, they have the most current knowledge and expertise to set up and manage the entire program. Protelligent also offers scaled support that can act as an extension of an organization’s existing IT team, so internal resources can be focused on other priorities and revenue-generating activities.
The bottom line is companies can no longer take shortcuts when it comes to faster detection and response to cross-environment attacks. Our Premonition^™ Security Suite breaks through the barriers small and medium-sized businesses typically experience in running a comprehensive security platform that includes SIEM technology. Call us at (855) PRO-TELL and get enterprise-class security now.