The Benefits of Managed SIEM Services

The cyber security landscape has never been more troubling. Data theft, malware, industrial espionage, distributed Denial-of-Service attacks, ransomware: businesses must constantly be on their guard against cyber security threats. Rightly, they’re worried about the consequences of a successful cyber attack’s reputational damage, business disruption, lost data, and loss of business.

The challenge? Securing businesses against cyber attacks is difficult. A midsized business might have hundreds of devices, known as ‘end points’, to secure and keep safe.

Every email, every website visited, every incoming data file, every outside visitor or contractor: each represents a potential threat. Securing the server room is one thing; locking down the entire business is quite another.

And, as the saying goes, an attacker only has to get lucky once. You, and your business, must remain lucky permanently.

Or face the prospect of your business being locked out of its data, forced to negotiate with an overseas gang of cyber criminals about the size of the bitcoin ransom that you’ll have to pay to regain access to your data.

Missed alarms

Just as cyber security threats have evolved over the years, so too have businesses’ cyber defence tools and technologies.

A myriad of tools and technologies exist to monitor and secure endpoints, watch for suspicious file and data activity, monitor which programs and systems are running, and monitor which files are being accessed, and by which systems or which people.

The problem? Monitoring and managing all the resulting data. Time and again, when businesses are hacked, it turns out that cyber security tools had actually detected the threat—but nobody had looked at the warnings, or that alarms had simply been switched off or ignored.

Monitoring multiple cyber security tools, it turns out, is surprisingly difficult.

This is why growing numbers of businesses are turning to yet another layer of defence: Security Information and Event Manager (SIEM) technology. And in particular, managed SIEM.

What is a SIEM?

A Security Information & Event Management (SIEM) tool is a log management and security monitoring tool, designed to give users visibility of security events inside an organisation’s network.

Essentially, a SIEM tool aggregates all the event log data from those multiple security ‘point solutions’—as well as the underlying business systems and network devices themselves—and present businesses with a single security viewpoint.

Think of it as a security dashboard: all you need to see, in one location.

And it’s not just the raw log data, either. SIEM solutions intelligently analyse that data, comparing it with your business’s usual network norms, and flagging abnormal behaviour or beginnings of a potential cyber attack. Event logs are rich in data—but the key to detecting an IT security breach lies in intelligently analysing all those event logs.

As such, the logic of a SIEM system is attractive and compelling. It’s a different kind of security solution: rather than providing passive protection in much the same way as an anti-virus or anti-malware solution might, SIEM provides intelligent and active 24/7/365 monitoring of the event logs being generated by the systems and devices across your entire IT landscape, providing a threat warning capability that’s as near real-time as it’s possible to be.

No wonder SIEM systems are proving popular. According to technology analyst firm Gartner, for instance, the SIEM market is now worth $4.1 billion.

Running a SIEM vs managed SIEM services

SIEM systems aren’t necessarily a plug-and-play, fire-and-forget security solution. Especially for smaller businesses, and midsized companies.

In terms of upfront costs, they can be expensive. They can certainly be resource intensive, too. There’s still a need for skilled experts to monitor the SIEM solution.

And SIEM, when all’s said and done, provides a warning of an attack, but doesn’t of itself provide businesses with detailed advice or instructions as to what to do to prevent the attack, and get things back to normal.

In essence, you’re reliant on your own IT experts. Who may or may not be seasoned cyber security experts, with track records in handling cyber attacks.

The advantages of a managed SIEM services

This is why managed SIEM technology, provided and consumed as a service, is proving to be an increasingly popular way of accessing the benefits of a SIEM solution.

That hefty upfront cost of buying a SIEM tool? (And remember, you won’t want to buy a cut-price, second-rate SIEM.) Forget it: you’re affordably buying—and affordably paying for—SIEM as a service, through a subscription.

Those expensive experts? Forget them, too. Under managed SIEM, they’re there, alright—but as part of the subscription, and shared centrally with other subscribers.

Detailed advice, should an attack actually take place? Those experts know your IT landscape as well as you do. Supporting you through a cyber attack is—quite literally—their day job.

Managed SIEM services in practice

Perhaps the best way to appreciate quite what a managed SIEM service can do for your business is to take a close look at one. Aspire Technology Solutions offer a managed SIEM service in our range of RealProtect Managed Security Services.

Right from the start, your business is getting the very best and latest technology in a managed SIEM service—the SIEM tool we utilise, is produced by Securonix, and received the highest score in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for Security Information & Event Management analysis, published in 2021.

Forget worries about how resource-intensive a SIEM tool can be: our managed SIEM service runs out of our in‑house Security Operations Centre, in order to provide effective threat visibility across your entire IT estate, whether it be on‑premise, cloud, or a hybrid IT environment. And applying over 2,000 detection rules to detect even the most advanced cyber threats.

Integrating and ingesting logs from all your devices, infrastructure, systems, and applications, we use leading-edge user and entity behaviour analytics—as well as best‑in‑class threat intelligence—to provide visibility of security events inside your business’s network.

24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Help is at hand

And if a cyber attack actually happens? All subscribers to our RealProtect managed cyber security services are covered by Aspire’s Cyber Incident Response service, which is included with all our RealProtect managed security products.

Employing the highly-regarded SANS methodology, our Incident Response team follow a mature and well‑developed process in order to help you respond to a security incident efficiently and effectively.