13 Best SIEM Tools to Analyze and Manage Security Events [Free & Paid]

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools help businesses collect, analyze, and correlate log data from systems and devices across their IT infrastructures. The primary goal of SIEM is to centralize security management, detect security threats, offer compliance support, and assist in digital forensics.

If you’re exploring the top SIEM tools, you’ve come to the right place. After doing extensive research and participating in product demos, I’ve curated a list of the best enterprise and open-source SIEM solutions based on their features and use cases. Let’s dive in.

• 1. Exabeam LogRhythm SIEM
• 2. ManageEngine Log360
• 3. Graylog Security
• 4. IBM QRadar SIEM
• 5. SolarWinds Security Event Manager
• 6. Splunk SIEM
• 7. Insight IDR
• 8. Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM
• 9. NetWitness Logs
• 10. LevelBlue OSSIM
• 11. Wazuh
• 12. Sagan
• 13. Elastic Security
• Show moreShow less

Enterprise SIEM Tools

1. Exabeam LogRhythm SIEM

Exabeam LogRhythm SIEM is the leading self-hosted SIEM solution that you can easily integrate with your on-prem applications and cloud services. It allows you to collect log data from over 1,000 third-party products and cloud services.

It has 1,000 pre-built rules to help you detect and remediate security incidents. Furthermore, Exabeam LogRhythm SIEM provides 28 pre-packaged compliance frameworks. The best part is that you don’t have to engage in any manual process to start using these compliance frameworks. These frameworks come with lists, correlation rules, alerts, and reports to help you meet various compliances.

The LogRhythm Intelligence add-on integrates Exabeam user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) directly into the LogRhythm interface, delivering enriched user insights. This integration provides precise threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR).

Exabeam LogRhythm SIEM Features

• Normalizes and enriches log data with patented Machine Data Intelligence (MDI) Fabric for better searchability and analytics.
• Extracts accurate metadata automatically during ingestion with pre-built processing rules.
• Leverage over 1,000 pre-built AI Engine rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and compliance modules.
• Creates custom threat detections based on your organization’s unique needs.
• Generates risk-based alerts for quick incident response.
• Tests correlation rules to fine-tune detection.
• Automates workflows with embedded Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) and integration with 80+ partner solutions.

Why I Picked Exabeam SIEM

During my research, I noticed that Exabeam LogRhythm SIEM’s automation capabilities stand out from the other SIEM platforms mentioned in the list. It helps you automate repetitive tasks with embedded SOAR so your team can focus on critical, expertise-driven security efforts.

Exabeam SIEM Pricing

The website does not provide pricing details. You must contact the sales team for a pricing quote. You can request a free demo to explore Exabeam LogRhythm SIEM’s features.

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2. ManageEngine Log360

ManageEngine Log360 is a next-gen SIEM solution that detects advanced attacks by leveraging threat intelligence, ML-based anomaly detection, and rule-based attack detection techniques.

In addition to log management, it allows you to monitor and audit critical Active Directory (AD) changes in real time to enhance AD security. It also lets you gain visibility into cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure, AWS, and more. So you can track changes to users, permissions, and more to improve the security of your cloud environment.

Its audit-ready report templates and compliance violation alerts help you meet various regulatory compliances, such as PCI DSS, GLBA for finance, HIPAA for healthcare, FISMA for US federal agencies, SOX, and ISO 27001.

An automated response system in ManageEngine Log360 executes predefined actions when specific incidents occur. This provides swift and consistent threat mitigation, reducing your security teams’ manual efforts and leaving them with more time to fix high-priority issues.

ManageEngine Log360 Features

• Detects threats across events, networks, and endpoints for comprehensive risk mitigation.
• Offers advanced attack detection with rule-based correlation, MITRE ATT&CK integration, and machine learning.
• Includes User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) to identify insider threats.
• Expedites incident response with SOAR capabilities.
• Features integrated data loss prevention (DLP) to safeguard sensitive data.
• Enhances cloud security with an integrated cloud access security broker (CASB).
• Provides built-in compliance management for regulatory adherence.
• Delivers real-time security analytics to monitor critical resources.

Why I Picked ManageEngine Log360

After going through demos and research for various SIEMs, I’ve discovered that ManageEngine Log360 offers many unique features to improve security, including DLP integration, CASB integration, and advanced attack detection.

ManageEngine Log360 Pricing

ManageEngine Log360 offers custom pricing tailored to your requirements—contact the company for a personalized quote. A 30-day unrestricted free trial is also available.

Try ManageEngine Log360

3. Graylog Security

Graylog Security is a modern SIEM platform that overcomes the shortcomings of traditional solutions, such as complexity, limited integration support, complex management, and maintenance.

Graylog Security customizes its detection coverage based on the risks, security goals, and compliance needs applicable to your organization.

Graylog Security’s Threat Coverage Widget visually displays active detections and their alignment with MITRE ATT&CK Framework tactics. This feature helps you quickly assess existing threat coverage and identify areas for improvement.

Graylog Security streamlines your company’s operations with guided workflows. It automates routine tasks and offers investigation summaries to save your security team’s time. As a result, your security team can focus more on high-priority tasks.

Graylog Security Features

• Optimizes storage costs by routing and tiering data while ensuring valuable insights remain accessible.
• Improves incident resolution speed with guided workflows and automated task management.
• Maps active and potential detections to the MITRE ATT&CK framework for enhanced visibility.
• Improves triage efficiency by ingesting vulnerability reports and calculating risk scores.
• Automates incident response reporting for quick sharing with stakeholders.

Why I Picked Graylog Security

During my research, I discovered Graylog Security’s data routing capabilities. These prioritize active data while directing lower-value log data to a data warehouse for future investigations. This optimized storage approach effectively reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Graylog Security Pricing

Graylog Security pricing begins at $1,550 monthly for a 10GB/day plan, billed annually in advance.

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4. IBM QRadar SIEM

IBM QRadar leverages advanced AI, powerful threat intelligence, and access to the latest detection content to identify threats. As a result, alerts are more informative. Furthermore, it shows related alerts cohesively in a unified dashboard to reduce alert fatigue.

IBM QRadar comes with user-behavior analytics that lets you discover insider threats. It monitors and analyzes user activities. If it detects any deviations from their normal behavior, it can send you alerts. It detects abnormal patterns, including unauthorized access attempts or unusual data transfers.

IBM QRadar SIEM compliance solutions help mitigate data breach risks and simplify compliance with regulations like GDPR. They process SIEM log data using compliance extensions aligned with major regulatory standards at no extra cost.

Furthermore, it allows you to receive automatic compliance reporting against standards applicable to your organization and industry.

IBM QRadar’s popular use cases include advanced threat detection, ransomware detection, threat hunting, and compliance.

IBM QRadar Features

• Focuses on critical alerts by using IBM enterprise-grade AI and applying risk scoring to observable cases.
• Supports importing open-source Sigma Rules for quick adaptation to evolving threats.
• Accesses siloed data for investigations while balancing cost and critical data ingestion needs.
• Detects insider threats, identifies risky users, and generates actionable insights.
• Real-time analysis of network activity for improved visibility and actionable responses.

Why I Picked IBM QRadar

After a comprehensive evaluation of various SIEM platforms, I’ve selected IBM QRadar for its native support for thousands of open-source Sigma Rules. As a result, you can swiftly import validated, community-sourced instructions to address evolving threats effectively.

IBM QRadar Pricing

IBM QRadar offers a custom pricing plan based on your needs. Request a quote to get exact pricing details. You can also schedule a live demo to explore IBM QRadar’s features firsthand.

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5. SolarWinds Security Event Manager

SolarWinds Security Event Manager helps you improve your security posture by collecting and analyzing log data from all sources to identify and respond to threats.

With SolarWinds Security Event Manager, you can reduce the effort and time required to prepare for compliance audits by using proven reports. These reports are tailored for standards like HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOX.

What’s more, it includes Cyber Threat Intelligence Feeds to automatically detect and respond to user, application, and network threats. Active responses include blocking USB devices, logging off users, killing malicious processes, and more.

Security Event Manager licensing model charges based on the number of log sources rather than the volume of logs. This allows you to collect all relevant logs without worrying about increased costs due to log volume.

Security Event Manager Features

• Collects and normalizes logs centrally.
• Detects and responds to threats automatically.
• Integrates compliance reporting tools.
• Uses an intuitive dashboard and user interface.
• Offers file integrity monitoring.

Why I Selected SolarWinds Security Event Manager

During my research, I found that Security Event Manager’s file integrity monitoring tool is quite helpful. It detects and alerts you to changes in key files, folders, and registry settings. This feature helps protect sensitive information from theft, loss, and malware infection.

Security Event Manager Pricing

SolarWinds Security Event Manager pricing starts at $2,992. A free trial is available to assess its features.

Try SolarWinds Security Event Manager

6. Splunk SIEM

Splunk Enterprise Security is a leading SIEM platform that provides complete visibility, accurate detection with context, and improved operational efficiency.

Splunk SIEM automatically groups findings based on rules and techniques like entity similarity, cumulative risk scores, and MITRE ATT&CK thresholds, streamlining analysis. As a result, your security analyst will have a unified, high-fidelity view of related security events in a single click for faster and more informed decision-making.

Risk-Based Alerting (RBA) in Splunk Enterprise Security consolidates risk events into a unified risk index using correlation searches. When specific criteria are met, it generates a single risk notable, helping you focus on critical threats.

Its native integration with Splunk’s leading SOAR solution infuses automated playbooks with threat intelligence, which unifies threat detection, investigation, and response.

Splunk SIEM Features

• Offers faster threat detection and remediation through pre-built detections.
• Saves backs up and rolls back detection versions effortlessly using native automatic version control.
• Accesses 2,200+ partners and 2,800+ apps on Splunkbase for seamless integration with existing tools.
• Automatically aggregates findings using rules based on security techniques, risk scores, and MITRE ATT&CK thresholds for comprehensive insights.
• Integrates detection, investigation, and response workflows with Mission Control and automated SOAR playbooks.
• Collaborates and executes incident response workflows directly in Splunk Enterprise Security.

Why I Picked Splunk SIEM

I thoroughly explored Splunk SIEM’s features. I picked it because of its wide threat detection capabilities. It offers over 1,700 prebuilt detections.

These detections are designed to identify and remediate threats quickly and align with trusted industry frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, NIST CSF 2.0, and the cyber kill chain to offer comprehensive threat coverage.

Splunk SIEM Pricing

Splunk SIEM follows customized pricing. It offers a free trial to explore its features.

Try Splunk SIEM

7. Insight IDR

Insight IDR is a next-gen SIEM from Rapid 7. It simplifies centralized log management by securely storing all data in the Rapid7 Insight platform. To get started, you need only set up an on-premise virtual collector.

With intuitive log search and dashboards, you can quickly analyze data, create custom alerts, and meet compliance requirements without complexity.

The platform enriches and correlates data automatically during real-time ingestion. It attributes activity to specific users, adding geographical and contextual information. This feature highlights notable behaviors, identifies risky users, and supports swift and accurate investigations by filtering data based on users or locations.

It provides an up-to-date library of detections aligned with MITRE ATT&CK, covering AI-driven alerts, attacker behaviors, and IOCs. These detections, vetted by managed detection and response(MDR) experts, ensure accurate and comprehensive threat coverage. 

With three search modes—simple, advanced, and visual—InsightIDR ensures you can easily find anomalies. Regular expressions, Log Entry Query Language, and visual charts expose patterns and outliers without requiring complex queries.

Additionally, pre-built compliance dashboards for regulations like PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR streamline audits, saving time and effort.

Insight IDR Features

• Analyzes complex data faster with cloud-based data lakes and flexible log parsing.
• Detects endpoint threats early using reliable Insight Agent.
• Recognizes network threats through curated intrusion detection and lightweight sensors.
• Identifies anomalies with continuous user activity baselines via UEBA.
• Simplifies integrations with extensive third-party support and SaaS infrastructure.
• Detects threats earlier with deployable honeypots and deception technology.
• Automates responses with prebuilt workflows and seamless ticketing integrations.

Why I Picked Insight IDR

I picked InsightIDR for its powerful deception technology, including honeypots and honey credentials, which expose threats early. It allows you to create honey pots, honey files, honey uses, and honey credentials to spot malicious behavior early in the attack chain.

Insight IDR Pricing

Insight IDR’s pricing is available on request. You can try the product for 30 days.

Try Insight IDR

8. Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM

Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM offers you visibility across your enterprise, providing you with a detailed context of an attack. It automatically alerts you when it finds known and unknown threats.

It comes with the MITRE ATT&CK™ Coverage Explorer, which allows you to get a comprehensive view of adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). By aligning your security detections with the ATT&CK framework, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your defenses.

Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM helps your security team align on critical threats by combining event management with an interactive heads-up display. This feature provides real-time threat intelligence and analytics, letting your team prioritize alerts effectively and focus on the most pressing risks.

The Insight Engine in Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM enables you to reduce alert fatigue. Its adaptive signal clustering algorithm automatically groups related signals and accelerates triage. When aggregated risk exceeds a threshold, it generates actionable insights to help your security team focus on critical threats.

Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Features

• Accelerates threat hunting with automated insights enriched with user and network context.
• Scale efficiently with cloud-native architecture supporting multi-tenant scaling and elasticity.
• Centralizes security log management on a collaborative SIEM platform for SecOps, ITOps, and DevOps users.
• Streamlines workflows with a security interface integrating deep search and modern SecOps processes.
• Protects hybrid and multi-cloud environments with native detection across evolving threat surfaces.
• Deploys SIEM quickly with prebuilt integrations and content rules in an intuitive, user-friendly platform.

Why I Picked Sumo Logic Cloud

I selected Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM for its automation capabilities. With hundreds of out-of-the-box integrations and playbacks or the ability to create my own, I can automate responses manually or automatically.

Sumo Logic Cloud Pricing

Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM pricing depends on your analytic usage profile. Contact the sales team for custom pricing based on your requirements. It offers a fully featured free trial.

Try Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM

9. NetWitness Logs

NetWitness Logs offers visibility into your log data across your entire IT environment. It provides centralized log management and monitoring for public clouds and SaaS applications, detecting threats beyond signature-based tools. It also helps you reduce dwell time and meet various compliances.

NetWitness Logs improves log data with threat intelligence and context to pinpoint high-priority threats and minimize false positives. As a result, your security teams can focus on crucial threats.

What’s more, NetWitness Logs uses its patented technology to dynamically parse and enrich logs at capture time, generating metadata for faster alerting and analysis. It allows customizable report views and formats.

NetWitness Logs automates log discovery with heuristic and dynamic parsing, which simplifies log ingestion from new or diverse sources. It provides immediate visibility into logs and metadata, reducing manual configuration efforts and adapting to changing environments.

NetWitness Logs Features

• Collects, analyzes, and stores log data from over 350 event sources to support security and regulatory compliance.
• Parses enriches, and indexes log at capture time to accelerate alerting and analysis.
• Offers modular deployment on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid architectures.
• Provides predefined and customizable compliance templates for multiple regulations, such as HIPAA and PCI-DSS.
• Leverages machine learning for user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) to identify unknown threats.
• Optimizes log collection by controlling data flow from satellite offices to centralized locations.

Why I Picked NetWitness Logs

I chose NetWitness Logs because its automated discovery and dynamic parsing technology simplify managing diverse and changing environments.

Unlike manual configurations required by other tools, it rapidly ingests new sources and processes unsupported logs, providing immediate visibility and actionable metadata.

NetWitness Logs Pricing

NetWitness hasn’t published pricing details on its website. You need to request a pricing quote. It offers a product demo to help you explore NetWitness Logs’ features.

Get NetWitness Logs

Open Source SIEM Tools

10. LevelBlue OSSIM

LevelBlue OSSIM is a widely used open-source SIEM that collects event data, normalizes it, and correlates it to help you identify risks and monitor your users’ behavior.

In addition to offering SIEM event correlation, its unified platform provides you with various capabilities, such as asset discovery, vulnerability assessment, intrusion detection, and behavior monitoring.

A good thing about LevelBlue OSSIM is that it leverages LevelBlue Labs Open Threat Exchange (OTX) to receive real-time information about malicious hosts. You can also contribute to this threat feed.

You can deploy it on-premises and in physical and virtual environments. You can create tickets based on the OSSIM alarm. It doesn’t support cloud AWS or Azure cloud monitoring.

LevelBlue OSSIM Features

• Discovers and inventories assets, assesses vulnerabilities, detects intrusions, and monitors behaviors using an integrated security toolset.
• Leverages community-powered threat intelligence via Open Threat Exchange® (OTX™) for real-time updates on threats.
• Visualizes and analyzes security events with basic dashboards and tools.
• Offers support through community forums and comprehensive knowledge base resources.
• Customizes correlation rules.

Why I Picked LevelBlue OSSIM

I picked LevelBlue OSSIM SIEM because it integrates with Open Threat Exchange (OTX). This allows for real-time sharing and receiving of threat intelligence. You can plan a better proactive defense against malicious hosts with the latest community-driven insights.

LevelBlue OSSIM Pricing

You can download it for free.

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11. Wazuh

Wazuh SIEM aggregates and analyzes telemetry in real-time to help you detect threats and meet regulatory compliances. It can collect event data from endpoints, network devices, cloud workloads, applications, etc. 

Wazuh generates insightful reports that offer high-level security analysis and actionable information tailored to your needs. These reports also effectively demonstrate compliance with various regulations and standards.

During my research, I have found that Wazuh offers flexibility in log management. The Wazuh agent on monitored endpoints and sources collects and forwards logs to the server for analysis. It also supports agentless monitoring. You can send logs via syslog or third-party API integrations. 

The Wazuh Vulnerability Detection module identifies vulnerabilities in operating systems and applications on monitored endpoints. It uses sources like Wazuh’s CTI platform, local repositories, and external databases such as the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), Canonical, Red Hat, and Microsoft to get vulnerable information. 

Wazuh’s popular use cases include security analytics, intrusion detection, log data analysis, file integrity monitoring, vulnerability detection, configuration assessment, incident response, and cloud security.

Wazuh Features

• Monitors and audits endpoint activity to detect anomalies or indicators of compromise.
• Detects and prioritizes vulnerabilities on monitored endpoints for faster decision-making and remediation.
• Identifies misconfigurations and security flaws using the Security Configuration Assessment (SCA) capability.
• Scans systems against Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks to remediate vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and deviations from best practices.
• Leverages default rulesets to support frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA, NIST 800-53, TSC, and GDPR.
• Correlates events from multiple sources and integrates threat intelligence feeds for real-time alerts.
• Customizes alerts, dashboards, and reports to respond effectively to specific security needs.

Why I Picked Wazuh

I picked Wazuh for its powerful security configuration assessment feature that identifies misconfigurations and security flaws in your systems. It scans against CIS benchmarks, helping you detect and remediate vulnerabilities, deviations, or misalignments with security standards and best practices.

Wazuh Pricing

Wazuh is a free-to-use open-source SIEM that includes community support at no cost. For professional support, subscription plans are available, with details provided upon request.

Get Wazuh

12. Sagan

Sagan is an open-source log analysis engine written in C. It is managed by Quadrant Information Security. 

Sagan’s multi-threaded architecture enables it to utilize all available CPUs and cores for real-time log processing, maximizing efficiency and performance. By distributing log analysis tasks across multiple threads, Sagan makes sure that no single CPU core becomes a bottleneck, even in high-volume environments.

Sagan’s structure and rule syntax are intentionally similar to those used in Suricata and Snort Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS). This design choice improves compatibility with existing rule management tools like Oinkmaster and PulledPork. As a result, you can easily use Sagan to correlate log events with your existing IDS/IPS. 

Sagan supports multiple output formats. It normalizes logs with liblognorm and enables GeoIP-based IP address location tracking. Furthermore, it can automate responses by executing scripts on events. You can integrate it with firewalls via Snortsam for dynamic threat blocking.

Sagan Features

• Integrates with graphical-based security consoles like Snorby, BASE, Sguil, and EveBox.
• Exports data to other SIEM systems via syslog for enhanced interoperability.
• Tracks events based on geographic locations using IP address source or destination data.
• Monitors activity by time of day to flag unusual login times or patterns.
• Parses and extracts data using liblognorm or built-in parsing rules for IPs, ports, strings, and hashes.
• Queries custom blacklists and threat intelligence feeds for IPs, hashes, URLs, emails, and usernames.
• Employs client tracking to identify machines that start or stop logging data.
• Reduces alert fatigue by setting thresholds to trigger alerts only after specific criteria are met.

Why I Picked Sagan

During my research, I found that Sagan offers a rich set of features, including client tracking, time-of-day activity monitoring, and geographic-based event tracking. These capabilities make Sagan a compelling choice as an open-source SIEM tool.

Sagan Pricing

Sagan is free to download.

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13. Elastic Security

Elastic SIEM leverages AI-driven security analytics to help your security team manage alerts, conduct investigations, and automate responses. It is built on open-source Elasticsearch.

Elastic SIEM can onboard custom data quickly and analyze data by petabyte across continents and clouds. You can collect and normalize data across your attack surface. If you need custom integrations, you can build them in minutes. Its pre-built ML jobs help your team detect unknown threats.

Elastic is recognized as a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SIEM for Enterprise 2024 Vendor Assessment.

Elastic Security Features

• Investigate threats using expert-built detection rules aligned with MITRE ATT&CK® from Elastic Security Labs.
• Automate detection with prebuilt rules and triage alerts using generative AI to identify critical attacks.
• Use prebuilt ML models to uncover unknown threats and assign behavioral risk scores to users and entities.
• Boost analyst productivity with AI guidance, contextual insights, and evidence-based investigation guides.
• Build and normalize custom integrations to collect data across your attack surface in minutes.
• Elevate workflows with external SOAR integrations and interactive timeline findings.
• Deploy Elastic anywhere, including on-prem, cloud, SaaS, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments.

Why I Picked Elastic Security

After researching various SIEM solutions, I found that Elastic SIEM strategically uses AI and ML the most to simplify SOC analysis. Its AI-driven security analytics help your SOC team perform faster threat detection, conduct quicker investigations, and deliver confident responses.

Elastic Security Pricing

Elastic Security pricing begins at $95 per month, but it uses a custom pricing model. The final cost depends on your specific requirements and chosen subscription plan. A free trial is also available.

Try Elastic Security

What Are SIEM Tools?

SIEM tools (Security Information and Event Management tools) are software solutions that collect, analyze, and manage logs from various data sources within your IT environment. They provide real-time monitoring, threat detection, and incident response by consolidating logs and events from servers, networks, and applications and correlating events.

SIEM tools help organizations detect potential threats, ensure compliance, and streamline security operations efficiently.

How SIEM Tools Work

A SIEM tool work by combining the following two technologies—

Security Information Management (SIM)—it focuses on collecting, storing, and analyzing security logs for historical analysis and compliance reporting.

Security Event Management (SEM)—it focuses on real-time monitoring and analysis of security events. It identifies patterns, detects anomalies, and triggers alerts when threats are found.

You can break down the entire SIEM process as below:

• Log Management—A SIEM tool collects and analyzes logs from an organization’s data sources, including firewalls, servers, network devices, etc.
• Event Correlation—After collecting log data, an SIEM tool correlates events from multiple data sources to uncover meaningful patterns. For example, an SIEM detects multiple failed logins, followed by a successful login from a foreign IP and large file access. By correlating these events, it identifies potential account compromise.
• Incident Response—Once an SIEM solution detects an anomaly or an indicator of compromise, it sends alert based on pre-defined rules to help a SOC team deploy the incident repose plan.

Many next-gen SIEM tools include automated response capabilities for repetitive events. However, SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) takes automation further.

Curious about the difference between SIEM and SOAR? Read our SIEM vs. SOAR article to learn how these two security solutions differ from one another.

4 Types of SIEM Tools

SIEM tools can be divided into four main categories: on-premises SIEM, cloud-based SIEM, hybrid SIEM, and open-source SIEM.

Let’s explore these different types of SIEM tools below:

1. On-Premises SIEM Tools—You can install on-premises SIEM tools within your company’s infrastructure. For example, IBM QRadar is an on-premises SIEM.
2. Cloud-Based SIEM Tools—Cloud-based SIEM tools are hosted and managed in the cloud and delivered as a service. Insight IDR, for example, is a cloud-based SIEM.
3. Hybrid SIEM Tools—Hybrid SIEM tools combine the capabilities of both on-prem and cloud-based SIEM platforms. An example of a hybrid SIEM is Exabeam SIEM.
4. Open-Source SIEM Tools—Open-source SIEM tools are developed and maintained by a community of developers rather than a single company. Most often, open-source SIEM tools are free to download. For example, LevelBlue OSSIM.

6 Benefits of Using SIEM Tools

SIEM tools provide real-time threat detection and alerting, helping you quickly manage security incidents. Below, we have listed the key benefits of using SIEM tools.

1. Real-Time Threat Detection

SIEM tools continuously monitor and analyze log data from connected devices in your IT environment in real-time. Using AI and ML, they correlate events to detect patterns or anomalies indicating potential threats or attacks. If they find any signs of security threats, they alert security teams. So, SIEM tools minimize the likelihood of security threats being realized.

2. Fast Incident Response

SIEM tools allow security teams to deploy an incident response plan quickly during a security attack by offering a centralized view of security events and real-time alerts. Moreover, many next-gen SIEM tools come with playbooks and automated workflows to automate repetitive low-priority tasks. As a result, SOC team members will have more time to focus on critical security events.

3. User and Entity Behavior Analytics

Most advanced SIEM tools leverage AI and machine learning algorithms to set baseline user and entity behavior. By constantly analyzing user and entity behavior, SIEM tools can identify insider threats, compromised accounts, and other indicators of compromise. So, by employing user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), SIEM tools can proactively fix insider threats.

4. Compliance Support

SIEM tools help companies meet various compliances by automating the collection, monitoring, and reporting of security data. They consolidate logs, track access activities, and generate detailed audit reports to meet regulatory requirements. Real-time alerts detect policy violations promptly, simplifying adherence to standards like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS.

5. Forensic Analysis

SIEM tools can collect, store, and analyze log data from your connected devices for a long period of time. So, they are indispensable in forensic analysis and threat hunting. By analyzing past log data, your security team can pinpoint the origin and scope of an attack and discover persistent threats that have evaded other types of security controls.

6. Security Management Cost Optimization

SIEM tools reduce security management costs by automating monitoring, detection, and reporting. All of this can significantly lower dependency on manual efforts. As they can help detect security threats early, they minimize recovery costs and prevent potential downtime or financial losses.

How To Choose the Right SIEM Tool for Your Business?

Choosing the right SIEM solution for your business depends on factors such as your organization’s size, budget, compliance requirements, and security needs.

We have listed key points to help you make an informed decision when purchasing a SIEM tool.

• Identify Your Needs: Understand your organization’s security goals, existing infrastructure, and the types of threats you need to monitor.
• Evaluate Features: Look for features such as real-time monitoring, advanced UEBA analytics, automated responses, and integration capabilities to meet your security requirements.
• Scalability: Pick a tool that can handle your current volume of data and grow with your business needs over time.
• Ease Of Use: Choose a SIEM tool with an intuitive interface and straightforward configuration to minimize complexity for your SOC team.
• Compliance Requirements: Reputable SIEM tools support common compliance, including GDPR, PCI-DSS, etc. Verify that the SIEM tool you consider offers built-in compliance reporting and monitoring for regulations applicable to your industry.
• Vendor Reputation: Research the SIEM vendor’s track record and customer support options. A reputable vendor with strong support can be invaluable during SIEM implementation and ongoing use.
• Cost: Assess the tool’s pricing structure, including licensing, implementation, and maintenance costs, to ensure it fits your budget.

Buying the right SIEM tool to meet your requirements can be overwhelming, as the market is flooded with options. All SIEM vendors claim to offer unique solutions.

Therefore, I suggest taking trials and getting demos of as many SIEM tools as possible to determine which one better serves your needs. This process may take some time, but it increases the likelihood of choosing the best SIEM tool for your business.

Frequently Asked Questions About SIEM

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