According to Deloitte, nearly half of individuals fall for a phishing scam while working at home. Given that the average cost of this type of data breach can be upwards of £100,000 ($137,000 USD), poor security can be a clear and present danger to the bottom line of your business.
To make matters worse, phishing scams are only one type of cyber security threat that businesses face today. Malware, fraudulent websites, and direct attacks on companies are all causes for concern when it comes to cyber security, and in today’s culture of remote-first working, these threats are growing.
But, with a proactive mindset and a SIEM strategy in place, businesses can massively reduce the risk of digital scams, virtual hacks, or electronic bamboozles.
But what exactly is SIEM? Here’s what you need to know.
What is SIEM?
SIEM (security and information event management) is a service that delivers real-time monitoring of an organisation’s network systems to detect unusual and anomalous activity.
A comprehensive SIEM service combines security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM) together to aggregate and analyse relevant data from multiple sources across a network. Using this data, SIEM will spot unusual activity and proactively shut down perceived threats.
So, how does a SIEM solution protect your business?
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Complete visibility into every cyber security threat
First and foremost, a SIEM tool offers holistic visibility into threats across your entire network environment. To do this, it collects all event and log data, and organises it into categories like successful and failed logins, malware activity, possible phishing scams, and so on.
Thanks to this categorisation, visibility quickly turns into clarity for IT analysts who may need to step in and investigate suspicious activity.
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Automated countermeasures for faster threat detection
A SIEM service significantly shortens the time it takes to recognise potential threats. And because it catches these threats early on, it minimises the risk of a data leak.
For anomalies that don’t require human intervention, a SIEM service will still report on this so that IT teams can amend and update automated security rulesets as required. And when this tool does find something that meets the requirements of a security protocol, it will alert human IT teams who can conduct an investigation.
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24/7 security event monitoring
Cyber security threats operate a little like spiders – they work alone, and they’re most active at night after human IT professionals have fallen asleep.
To truly protect both your on-premise and cloud-based networks from suspicious activity, though, it requires 24/7/365 monitoring. Fortunately, a SIEM service doesn’t need a mid-afternoon nap or a morning coffee break, meaning you benefit from continuous threat prevention and enhanced data security, no matter what time of day.
Compliance and scalability are built in
In addition to visibility, automated countermeasures and continuous monitoring, a SIEM service also helps businesses adhere to standards like HIPAA and GDPR. In short, robust data logs and reporting features allow organizations in heavily-regulated industries to rest easy about whether or not they are compliant.
Better yet, a SIEM service can handle huge amounts of data and can integrate with a variety of security products, meaning you can scale safely as your organisation (and your tech stack) grows.
To find out more about how Redcentric deploys SIEM to help protect your network environment, visit here.
