As the threat of serious cyberattacks looms, today’s organizations need to be able to quickly and effectively respond to incidents. Incident response (IR) consists of many distinct aspects which rely on comprehensive visibility for accurate decision making.

Although many solutions can help with parts of the IR process, the insights a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution provides prove useful throughout. Let’s explore SIEM's role in IR and how critical it is for effective, repeatable response processes.

SIEM and IR

Incident response programs can be broken down into six main components, known as PICERL:

• Preparation
• Identification
• Containment
• Eradication
• Recovery
• Lessons learned

Using SIEM, SecOps teams can cover many key aspects within each component, gaining visibility and awareness to help guide their decisions.

Preparation

The preparation phase of an IR program spans many parts of a security approach, from implementing policies, procedures, and tools to establishing roles and responsibilities. Building these out creates a baseline from which an organization operates from a security perspective. On top of this, however, organizations need baseline data to help identify operating norms and identify deviations.

SIEM’s role in the IR preparation phase is immense. As a key solution in the SecOps toolbelt, SIEM gathers and presents performance, alert, and event data across the IT environment. Doing so helps IR teams determine a standard for understanding typical activities within the network. This, in turn, makes it easier to detect anomalies that may indicate a security incident.

Implementing SIEM also falls into the preparation purview of establishing the tools and procedures of a security program. SIEM solutions should be continually tuned with new and improving detection rules to keep pace with evolving threats. Managed cloud SIEM options don’t require manual tuning by their direct users but must be fully integrated with the rest of the IT environment to ensure data breadth and fidelity.

Identification

Identification occurs when security teams spot any event, activity, or behavior that could indicate anomalous or malicious actions within the organization. Speed in this phase is critical as every second between the beginning of an attack and its discovery is time an adversary can use to exploit the organization.

SIEM plays one of its largest roles during the identification phase. As a centralized repository for event and activity data across the organization, SIEM is the hub for detecting potential threats. Prebuilt detection rules help to alert teams to threats within moments, leading to quicker identification of attacks and other security issues. Given that it integrates data from across the IT environment, SIEM helps to increase visibility and ensure that no threat is left undetected.

The best SIEM options feature native analytics engines that correlate and contextualize data to streamline IR processes. This approach helps teams identify potential threats even faster while reducing false positives that lead to alert fatigue.

Containment

Once a threat is detected, it must be addressed to stop attacks from proliferating. Given the depth of the cyberattack lifecycle, many systems are affected during security events. And, if not properly contained, an adversary can breach sensitive environments and exfiltrate data.

With its breadth of visibility, SIEM helps SecOps teams see the full extent of an attack to facilitate proper containment. By tracking the adversary’s actions through SIEM, security personnel can effectively start putting up blockers to prevent the spread of an attack. This is made easier with case management systems, which automatically group related alerts.

Eradication

After being contained, the threat must be eliminated from the environment. From root cause analysis to deleting artifacts, eradicating threats involves scrutiny and decisive action. This process can be far-reaching, taking considerable time to properly address each affected system.

Using SIEM, the process of eradicating threats is made significantly easier. SIEM shows every alert triggered along the adversary’s path, giving responders a trail to follow and highlighting potential vulnerabilities along the way. This data helps them to hunt for other threats, possible footholds, or any other areas where the attacker may have established persistence.

Recovery

Although at this point the threat is effectively eradicated, it doesn’t mean the threat is gone. Getting back to “business as usual” involves tracking affected systems, restoring backups, and maintaining constant vigilance over known vulnerabilities.

SIEM’s ongoing visibility allows organizations to tightly monitor their environment to detect any recurrence that indicates remaining threats. Using previously established baseline data from the preparation phase, SecOps personnel can return their systems to standard operations. Security teams can also build new detection rules into their SIEM to address the attacker’s specific targets and stop further exploitation.

Lessons learned

Now that normalcy has resumed, it’s time to reflect on IR procedures as a whole. IR documentation and reporting are critical to compliance, cyber insurance, and a healthy security posture. The reflection process also provides opportunities for improvement across the IT environment, including security procedures and further detection tuning.

When it comes to reporting and documentation, SIEM is crucial. Retained log data and visualization dashboards make it easy for organizations to accurately disclose their findings. In an audit, SIEM logs show how attacks unfolded and display the effectiveness of the security program. They also help to meet retention period compliance requirements.

Then, after the dust has settled, organizations can leverage their SIEM data to highlight opportunities to improve. This continuous evolution is the hallmark of a mature cybersecurity approach and is critical in adherence to compliance frameworks.

See SIEM in action

When it comes to IR processes, few technology solutions are more useful than SIEM. As you seek to improve your IR capabilities and general cybersecurity posture, consider SIEM to bring unprecedented visibility to your operations.

To better understand the power of SIEM, read our threat report on how SIEM proved useful in uncovering a prominent business email compromise campaign.

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