Cyber security is constantly evolving to keep ahead of cyber criminals. With new terms and solutions becoming popular every year it can be hard to understand what is right for you.
One thing that is clear is that creating a single view that collates all of your data into one place is a key way of identifying and responding to cyber attacks. Both XDR and SIEM solutions do this but how do you know what one is right for you?
What is an XDR
XDR has emerged as a simpler and more efficient way to deal with the broad array of threats it is not a product that you buy but a new way of managing security.
An XDR platform collects and correlates data across a broad array of network and security surfaces, including servers, endpoints, cloud workloads, network intrusion prevention systems, identity and access management products, email and more.
It analyses the data it collects, then prioritises and sorts the results, identifying even advanced threats to prevent breaches and attacks. Compared to older tools and technologies, XDR provides a higher fidelity and confidence of cyber awareness and allows security teams to identify and eliminate security vulnerabilities without adding extra tools or more people. The focus on taking risk data and assessing the threat of it while also automating the response is the key benefit of XDR.
What is a SIEM?
SIEM is a centralised security centre that collects and monitors all the various activity across your estate. This data includes log data from devices, applications and systems. SIEMs generally normalise the data for easier analysis and then sift through this data in real-time to identify potential security threats.
Think of a SIEM as a centralised security command centre. It continuously collects log data – a record of activity – from various devices, applications and systems across your network. This data is then normalised (formatted consistently) for easier analysis. SIEMs can sift through massive amounts of information, identifying potential security threats in real-time.
Comparing SIEM vs XDR
SIEM has taken a broad approach from the outset, collecting, aggregating and analysing a vast array of log and event data from almost every source across the enterprise. That includes governance and compliance, rule-based pattern matching, heuristic and behavioural threat detection like UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics), and hunting across telemetry sources for IOCs or atomic indicators.
However, while XDR also analyses a broad range of sources, there are crucial differences. SIEM tools typically require a lot of fine-tuning and effort to implement. This adds cost and complexity.
SIEM platforms were never designed to scale to the level required to ingest the massive volume of event telemetry from noisy platforms like cloud infrastructure or even EDR. Security teams can be overwhelmed by the sheer number of alerts coming from a SIEM tool, which means that critical alerts can be lost in the noise or ignored. In addition, even though a SIEM captures data from dozens of sources and sensors, it is still a passive analytical tool that issues alerts.
An XDR platform solves the challenges of an SIEM tool with effective detection and response to targeted attacks, including behaviour analysis, threat intelligence, behaviour profiling, and analytics. The focus on automated responses and AI first to manage the massive amount of data down to the key elements all make it much easier to manage.
Ultimately a SIEM solution is a great step forward but if you are looking to improve your response time, take risk data and turn that into threat analysis automatically and automate responses then an XDR is a better choice. If you are looking at an XDR solution then we recommend SentinelOne Singularity, the market leading solution. Discover more about SentinelOne here or contact our team who can help.
