05/05/2022 | News release | Distributed by Public on 05/05/2022 12:43
Many organizations need to meet various compliance standards, and investing in a security information and event management (SIEM) solution can often help them reach that goal. But it worth the cost and effort to deploy a SIEM solution solely for compliance? Or is there a way to maximize the value of your SIEM by strengthening cybersecurity as well as achieving compliance?
This article will help you answer those critical questions.
SIEM solutions are designed to aggregate and analyze event log data from multiple applications, systems, network devices and servers to spot suspicious events that put security or business continuity at risk. By combining the capabilities of security event correlation (SEC), security event management (SEM) and security information management (SIM), SIEM software provide real-time as well as historical analysis of security events. They can help with incident investigation and compliance reporting since they thoroughly analyze contextual, historical and event data from multiple sources across the IT infrastructure.
Indeed, modern SIEMs are far more advanced than early systems that merely gathered and logged data from different sources. Now, SIEM software can deliver comprehensive insight into network security and data protection by looking for anomalous activity in your IT network that could indicate compliance, performance and security issues. By aggregating and analyzing detailed logs of events, a SIEM can give you real-time insight into potential security threats.
SIEM solutions can help organizations comply with industry and government regulations. In particular, with a SIEM, compliance requirements related to cybersecurity, data security and privacy, and breach reporting can be much easier for organizations to meet.
SIEM solutions offer several key benefits that apply regardless of which regulatory compliance frameworks or mandates your organization must comply with:
The NIST cybersecurity framework provides recommended security controls for federal agencies in the United States. However, many other organizations have adopted NIST because following its recommendations helps them comply with other regulations, such as SOX, PCI DSS and HIPAA.
That's how SIEM solutions can help you meet NIST's core functionalities:
FISMA is a set of compliance regulations that require federal agencies to implement an information security program to secure sensitive data and information technology systems that support the agency's operations and assets, including those provided or managed by another agency, third-party vendor or service provider.
A SIEM can help you meet FISMA requirements for security controls by:
PCI DSS is a security standard for companies that handle branded credit cards. It is administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.
PCI DSS includes 12 requirements, all of which require technical measures for log tracking. In particular, requirement 10 of PCI DSS calls for adopting a well-defined log tracking technology.
A SIEM solution can help you to comply with PCI DSS requirements by:
The GDPR is a European Union (EU) regulation that governs how personal data is to be collected, kept, processed and deleted. This data security and privacy regulation applies to all organizations, regardless of location, that collect personal data from EU residents.
SIEM tools can help you achieve GDPR compliance by:
HIPAA is designed to protect the confidentiality and privacy of medical records and other protected health information (PHI). Any organization that stores or electronically transmits healthcare information - such as pharmacies, nursing homes and psychologists - must comply with HIPAA standards and requirements.
SIEM security solutions can help you follow HIPAA standards by:
SOX is important if your company is publicly traded. Established in 2002, this standard aims to protect investors by making corporate disclosures more accurate.
A SIEM platform can help you comply with SOX by:
FERPA protects the privacy of student records, which includes educational information, personally identifiable information (PII) and directory information.
A SIEM tool can help you meet FERPA's requirements by:
SIEM software solutions provide important functionality that can help you comply with regulatory mandates, including collection and storage of system logs, real-time event monitoring, threat detection, and alerting and reporting for incident response and investigation.
Although SIEMs do help organizations achieve and prove compliance with regulatory mandates, they have multiple drawbacks, including the following:
Summing up, adopting a SIEM solution just for compliance is often not a sound strategy. SIEMs are notoriously expensive and complicated to deploy and maintain, and they flood security teams with so many alerts that true threats are likely to be overlooked.
Netwrix solutions can help you improve security, data privacy and compliance while avoiding SIEM-related headaches. They provide solid data and application security on their own - and also integrate with SIEM tools to dramatically improve threat detection and response. In particular, SIEM solutions collect and report events as they appear in logs, so the output data is often cryptic and is missing critical details. Netwrix Auditor enriches the output with critical details and ensures it is easy to understand.
Netwrix offers prebuilt generic add-ons that facilitate integration with any SIEM solution that supports input data in .CEF format and in event log format. There are also add-ons specifically designed for the following SIEMs:
Read this eBook for further help in determining whether a SIEM is the best answer to your IT security challenges and more details about how the Netwrix data security platform will help you build a comprehensive security strategy.
A SIEM is not always the best solution for security and compliance for several reasons:
Yes. Unlike some other solutions, SIEM tools don't work right out of the box. They require your IT team to spend a lot of time and energy on customization and maintenance.
SIEMs help organizations ensure compliance by aggregating and safeguarding log data and automating the creation of reports aligned with GDPR, FERPA and other compliance mandates.