Let’s talk about a less discussed but critical aspect of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) – data management. While the primary goals of SIEM include threat detection, regulatory compliance, and swift response, the backbone of these systems is log message ingestion and storage. The amount of machine data generated from various systems, applications, and security tools is staggering. Storing and processing this data can be costly and inefficient.

Our world is more digitally connected than ever, including the critical infrastructure systems we rely on: power grids, water treatment plants, transportation networks, communication systems, emergency services, and hospitals. A successful attack on critical infrastructure can have dire consequences, ranging from widespread power outages and contaminated water supplies to economic downturns and societal disruption. Some of those consequences have come to fruition in recent years.

A head-spinning series of acquisitions and mergers is transforming the security information and event management (SIEM) market. Behind this market shakeup is the ongoing technological shift from traditional, manually intensive SIEM solutions to AI-driven security analytics. Legacy systems — characterized by manual processes for log management, investigation, and response — no longer effectively address today’s fast-evolving cyber threats.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is a critical tool in modern cybersecurity, combining Security Information Management (SIM) and Security Event Management (SEM) to provide real-time monitoring, threat detection and incident response. Obrela’s SIEM solutions collect and analyse security data from various sources to provide a comprehensive view of the security landscape.

Your Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure enables users to connect to web-based resources by translating everyday language into IP addresses. Imagine going into a restaurant, in the age before the internet, only to find that the staff speaks and the menu is written in a different language from yours. Without some shared communication form, you can’t order dinner, and they can’t give you what you want.

In the early days of cybersecurity, implementing a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system was akin to constructing a house from scratch. The SIEM was a blank slate, and transforming raw data into actionable insights was a long and arduous journey. It began with the daunting task of ingesting data from various disparate sources and formats. From there, security teams had to craft detections — rules designed to identify malicious or suspicious activity.

When building applications that ingest and analyze millions of data points per second, developers as a rule require good observability data on workload performance. That principle certainly holds true for us on the Cloud SIEM team, where delivering a highly reliable and responsive product to our customers is central to our day-to-day operations.

When we think about privilege access management (PAM), we typically think about it first as preventive control. PAM solutions manage who has privileged access to systems, enforce least-privilege principles and monitor and record privileged user activity. This is crucial for preventing misuse of high-level permissions and ensuring accountability.

On a Friday afternoon at 5 PM, you’re cruising along the backroads in your car, listening to your favorite music. You’re on vacation and making excellent time to your destination until you notice the long stream of red tail lights a few miles ahead. After sitting in standstill traffic for over an hour, you realize that highway construction created a detour to the two-lane backroad that you were using to skip the rush hour traffic.

The “Three Pillars” (people, process, and technology) management framework requires a delicate balance in order to achieve successful operations outcomes. Despite the technology pillar dominating the conversation as of late, cybersecurity practitioners are the backbone of your organization's defense against cyber threats.