Today, organizations threatened by complex and persistent attacks from multiple vectors are required to respond within minutes. That’s where a SIEM tool comes handy as it speeds up incident response and remediation. SIEM has become an integral component of any enterprise’s comprehensive cybersecurity framework. It is necessary for compliance reporting, incident response and forensics, real-time threat monitoring, user activity monitoring, threat intelligence and much more. But the harsh reality is that though most enterprises have a SIEM solution, most aren’t getting the best out of it. A vast majority of enterprises continue to express their own struggles with SIEM  solutions deployment and maintenance. A deeper understanding of SIEM capabilities and where the vulnerabilities may lie can help take your SOC to the next level.

SIEM challenges:

• Too much data to ingest: Modern enterprises generate terabytes of plaintext data each month, which is overwhelming for analysts to take in and utilize. Many of these alerts are false, which creates quite an overloaded headache for analysts. Also, with the increase in the volume of alerts or incidents, the SOC analysts struggle with manual analysis and investigation in addition to taking remedial action.
  
  
• Too much maintenance: Another big challenge for SIEM is that it comes with a labour commitment. You need to hire a skilled team with the bandwidth to support the analysis of large data feeds. A SIEM tool often misses the context and fails to provide information in a meaningful way and hence requires a lot of time invested by analysts, which could otherwise be spent analyzing critical issues.
  
  
• Poor Correlation Rules: SIEM analysis and alert capabilities are based on correlating rules written by a security expert. Those rules are often too rigid and difficult to adapt to new demands and therefore, you need to be strategic when creating threat intelligence and correlation rules.
  
  
• SIEM lacks use case implementation and automation: SIEM solutions can’t automate applying logs to specific needs. SIEM solutions aren’t able to coordinate the flow of data or tasks and hence, don’t provide any context useful for decision making.

Get the best out of your SIEM solution

A SIEM solution can achieve incredible outcomes with the following capabilities:

• Supports automation: Automation is a key component in addressing large volumes of alerts with a shortage of cybersecurity experts. It reduces repetitive, manual tasks, which frees up time for incident responders to focus on mission-critical tasks. Automation reduces mean time to respond (MTTR), increases SOC efficiency, shortens the learning curve for new hires and reduces the probability of errors during the IT process.
  
  
• Ability to enrich data: Enrichment will complement SIEM tools by fetching data from different systems and preparing it for investigation. Data enrichment tools/components can be integrated into workflows or response tools that act on alert. This provides more context and continuously improves the response process.
  
  
• Ability to do meaningful Investigation: Incident investigation is a time-consuming task that may take hours to days. Collecting data from various SOC sources and correlating it to generate insights is an extended process, which is often not possible as it depends on pre-configuring SIEM logs to collect this data in advance. However, it is not always possible to predict the data necessary for a specific investigation.
   
• Orchestration of repeatable tasks: When containing an incident, the user can activate different response systems (e.g.: blocking an IP, isolating host or sending a file to a sandbox) directly from SOAR tools. This reduces the learning curve and the number of tools SOC teams need to master.
  
  
• Trained Cybersecurity team with hands-on experience: At present, the global IT infrastructure is exponentially growing as more digital services and novel technologies surface in the market. Today, given the dynamism within the cybersecurity domain, it has also become necessary to update the SOC team’s skillset and improve both its coordination and performance during an ongoing incident. This is done through simulation of various real-life incidents, including ultramodern cyberattacks, via the Cyber Range solution. The approach ensures that everyone in the SOC is on the same page and can intercept and remediate any attack effectively.

The SIEM solution should be considered a first step to improve incidence response. Orchestration and automation capabilities coupled with an effectively trained team are critical to get maximum value from your SIEM solution.