SIEM systems have a wide range of use cases and are typically centered around threat detection, incident response, and compliance. They collect and analyze log data from across your entire digital presence to spot patterns that flag malicious activity as well as innocent security holes. They can even spot insider threats by identifying signs of unusual or non-role-appropriate use patterns. 

Many SIEM use cases include:

• Detecting and flagging multiple failed login attempts, often associated with brute force access attacks.

• Monitoring compliance with regulatory standards like PCI DSS, CMMC, CIS, and HIPAA.

• Creating audit trails to help pass audits more easily and with less disruption.

• Improving incident response times with more successful interventions and remediations, especially through automation of workflows.

Insider threat monitoring with anomalous login correlation

Former or current employees may have a motive to misuse their access to your connected systems. One common use for SIEM systems is to constantly and consistently monitor every point of access to your systems by correlating anomalous logins with concurrent security events, instantly. A good SIEM system can bring problems to your security team's attention faster, and often before any real harm is done.

Ransomware early warning via suspicious event log entries

SIEM use cases for many organizations include early warnings for ransomware attacks. Ransomware produces indicators that can be highly evident with SIEM, meaning it’s particularly easy to spot. Such clear-cut events are exactly where AI-backed automated logging and threat response capability truly shines. A SIEM system like Huntress Managed SIEM will spot these attacks almost every time, and can often prevent the actions ransomware attackers need to achieve to lock you out of your data in the first place.

Cloud misconfiguration spotting through API event feeds

Even a minor misconfiguration in your cloud computing or data storage assets can leave huge, nearly invisible security holes in your system. This threat is only increasing as businesses of all sizes move to cloud services. A good SIEM system monitors your API event feeds carefully and will typically spot misconfigurations quickly. It can then red flag the anomaly for your security team, who can remediate those security weak points before they are exploited. 

Third‑party risk visibility by ingesting vendor telemetry

This is really looking at SIEM use cases from a different angle. The three main roles a SIEM system can play in a typical organization include:

• Improving network visibility: A good SIEM system can retrieve data from all the users, devices, and apps attached to your enterprise network, even if many of those take place on third-party systems. 

• Enhancing digital security through automation: SIEM tools scan mountains of log data in near real-time and compare it to acceptable parameters and usage rules almost instantly. It can deal with clear problems itself and flag more subtle anomalies for human attention.

• Enabling compliance and forensic investigation: Finally, SIEM systems aid in regulatory compliance and forensic data investigations by logging virtually every movement of data across your systems. 

SIEM alerts best practices 

A good SIEM system will give you very few false positives, but a solid policy for managing SIEM alerts is still key to making the most of the system. Best practice requires:

• Setting your own alerts and rules, rather than using defaults.

• Carefully reviewing your existing alerts before setting new ones, you have to avoid both redundancy and inconsistency.

• Narrowly defining your alerts to cut down on false positives.

• Crafting your alerts to help you comply with regulations and contract terms.

• Learning when to use a simple rule and when to use a composite rule, and how to make them work together.

• Testing your alerts extensively and regularly.

There’s no one single answer to that question, and if there were, it would be misleading. Simply choosing the most popular option could be risky. You need to choose a SIEM system that excels at what your organization needs SIEM to do.

If you’d like to see how Huntress Managed SIEM can fit the use cases of your organization, we'd love to show you. Sign up for a free trial of our leading SIEM solution today and see the difference in security operations efficiency.