Migrate From Your Legacy SIEM to Leverage Modern SIEM Capabilities

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools have made great strides since their industry adoption in the early 2000s. While no evolution was more important than the sudden explosion of scalable, cloud-based data storage, an increasing focus was placed on AI and user operability. These are transforming SIEM tools from en-mass alert-making machines, into focused analysis and prioritization tools. This article will take you on a tour of how SIEM capabilities have evolved over the years, and which core components a SIEM needs today.
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How SIEMs Have Been Evolving Recently…

Since 2015, AI has increasingly been incorporated into SIEM. It’s more than just a separate bolt-on: it’s a fundamental architectural shift to the way in which a SIEM handles data. Rather than having static rules that trigger only when devices’ data points line up in a specific way, AI models are able to ingest historical data and build patterns of day-to-day behavior. More recently, these models’ accuracy is being improved by further SaaS application and threat intelligence data being fed to it. This collaborative approach – of an enterprise’s SIEM intelligence benefiting from the wider industry – allows current-day SIEMs to pick up indicators of attack that are completely novel to an organization.

Alongside inoculating wider industries from advanced threat actors, this focus on behavior allows for devices to be profiled via User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA). This takes event information and uses it to generate a baseline of normal behavior, such as a user’s typical browsing patterns and network activity. This way, otherwise undetectable threats like account takeover can be shut down in the nick of time.

…And Where They’ll Be in the Next Few Years

While SIEM features have already come a long way, analysts are still battling an ever-evolving threat. Two key advancements to keep an eye on within SIEM will be the implementation of Gen AI Large Language Models (LLMs), and real-time attack disruption. The first of these will improve how a SIEM tool integrates within an organization – aiding integration in smaller enterprises with super-lean cybersecurity teams. We’ve already covered how LLMs could aid in phishing discovery, but the ability for a SIEM tool to translate in-depth log and behavior analysis into plain, actionable English could do even more: rather than placing the burden on your highest-skilled analysts, SIEM alerts – and corrective actions – could be understood by team members without a high technical skillset.

Alongside this, Next-Gen (NG) SIEMs are increasingly pushing for more overlap with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) tooling. With a focus on real-time automated attack disruption, SIEM’s future is focused heavily on reducing the burden currently faced by overwhelmed analysts facing months-long alert backlogs.

Features that Your SIEM Needs Today

While fully automated threat management is a few years away yet, there are some features of modern SIEM tools that are no longer optional extras. The ability to detect emerging threats demands a core functionality that can not only handle the quantity of alert data – but verify and streamline them by grouping them into context-rich incidents.

Big Data Architecture

Big data technology allows for huge amounts of unstructured data across distributed computing environments to be easily stored and analyzed. Relying on this architecture allows SIEM analysis to encompass far more than just structured log files: it opens up avenues for ingesting third-party threat intelligence feeds, vulnerability databases and even email data into the data points that make up an alert.

Alongside the types of data that can be collected, your modern SIEM also needs to automatically pull this event data from all corners of your organization. This can be achieved in a variety of different ways: the first and most common is via an agent, or a small piece of software that’s installed directly on the target device. However, some devices aren’t suitable for this method, and a modern SIEM needs to have a variety of alternatives: whether connecting to the device with an API call, accessing log files from a connected storage device, or relying on event streaming protocols, the integrity of your SIEM depends on complete integration. Stellar Cyber pushes this one step further with an integrated Network Detection and Response feature that automatically discovers and pulls logs from all assets across a network.

To speed this up even more, Stellar Cyber comes packaged with extensive pre-built integrations for cloud and SaaS applications, allowing you to get up and running far faster. But, if you’ve already used a SIEM tool, you know that it’s not just about the quantity of data – it’s about how it’s used.

Context enrichment

SIEMs have a paradoxical problem: their security relies on a lot of data being ingested – but analysts are bogged down in endless alerts. To fix this, a NG-SIEM needs to re-assess not just how that data is analyzed, but how it’s presented to analysts. For instance, older SIEM tools have just one degree of analysis: the log data is collected, irrelevant pieces are disposed of, and the remaining pieces individually throw alerts in. Next-gen SIEM tools establish another layer of analysis through context enrichment – before the log is sent to the central correlation engine, an edge-based sensor can add more weight to an alert by packaging it with relevant activity happening on that specific device or network. What makes Stellar Cyber so special is the fact that this occurs not just at the furthest point of data collection – ie, a device – but one final time within the central engine. Examining alerts by establishing specific attack paths – in full context of your organization’s day-to-day behavior – allows Stellar Cyber to correlate one-off events into streamlined incidents. It’s these incidents that are then shown to analysts, with all relevant pieces of context revealed on the dashboard.

Make the Transition to a Modern SIEM

Struggling security admins, bloated alert remediation times, and manual threat detection processes are all signs that it’s time to start looking at better SIEM tools. The failures of legacy SIEM has shown that rapid risk mitigation is vital – and relying solely on manual analysis and intervention makes this nearly impossible. However, integrating a brand-new tool into your tech stack can be a daunting prospect. Stellar Cyber’s world-class SIEM migration places your organization first: by identifying the precise requirements that your SIEM’s day-to-day team needs, it becomes possible to fit together the wider pieces of the puzzle – such as what tools your new SIEM solution needs to integrate with, and the compliance demands made of your entire enterprise. This is translated into a migration plan that defines the timespan and resource requirements you’ll need for successful, efficient migration. Stellar Cyber’s industry-leading SIEM could provide your team with the chance it needs to reconsider its SIEM strategy. Rather than aimlessly collecting every log file under the sun, start selectively eradicating endless alerts with pre-set Automated Threat Hunting playbooks; add your own to automatically detect and block kill chains that may pose a risk to your own organization. Choose what specific actions your SIEM needs to take according to an incident’s prescribed risk level and start resolving incidents in minutes. Get the ball rolling this week and get in touch for a demo – our friendly team will show you the ins and outs of Stellar Cyber Next-Gen SIEM.

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