Cyber attacks are growing rapidly with an estimated 70% of organizations reporting a successful cyberattack.  An amazing 70% go undetected. and when they are detected, the attack goes unnoticed for 8 months. This means that a hacker has plenty of time to steal your business information and you won’t even know until you receive a call from the FBI or you see your name on the news. Clearly, the need for advanced monitoring, event correlation and alerting has never been higher. The latest generation of security monitoring solutions can help you avoid a data loss catastrophe.

Here are 5 reasons why security monitoring is the most important security you don’t own.

1. Security monitoring is part of every major security compliance regulation requirement.

   Just a few weeks ago, the Hollywood Hospital in California was hacked. Days after employees reported IT issues, hackers demanded 40 bitcoins – or $17,000 – to restore control of their computer network.

   Many companies store confidential patient or customer data (e.g. patients’ records, credit card data, financial data, SS#) that is protected under compliance regulations, like state privacy laws, HIPAA, PCI, and SOX. Any gap in security can lead to serious penalties, lost customers and lost credibility.

   For companies not held to compliance regulations, security “best practices” should still dictate the management of key infrastructure, such as: networks, servers, storage, applications, websites, endpoint, mobile, and wireless systems. As the demand for private customer information increases by criminals, every company is at risk of an attack.

2. SIEM Security Monitoring is required to adhere to customer, partner and vendor compliance requirements.

   If you are in the services business, you have probably received letters or contracts from vendors, partners or customers asking that you certify that you are security compliant with, HIPAA, PCI, ISO, government, security best practices or other regulatory requirements. If you cannot attest to compliance, you risk losing your customers, partners, vendors and your business.

   These regulations require appropriate security measures be taken. In addition to a strong security defense, you must also show appropriate security monitoring, alerting and security system adjustments.

3. SIEM Security monitoring is the only way to catch real-time threats, user access violations, and network changes.

    You might rely on security product alerts and existing in-house IT staff to monitor suspicious activity in your network. But that’s not enough.

   Reliance on security product logs and alerts is a recipe for disaster. Individual security products do not have the breadth of visibility that is needed to catch APTs and multi-prong attacks. Firewalls, endpoint security, web and email security aren’t even designed to deal with the dynamic nature of your network, external and user based security threats. Hence the invention of Security Information and Event Monitoring systems (SIEM)

   Even buying an SIEM solution may not be enough unless it is installed properly, monitored, maintained and adjusted by experts, Self-managed solutions have a shelf life of approximately 18-24 months due to lack of resources to do the complete job.

4. SIEM Security monitoring can integrate intelligence from entire network to provide a more complete risk picture.

   These days, hackers adapt Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) to penetrate your network. APT attack methods work collectively to steal intellectual property, employing a wide variety of methods over time, and can steal or destroy data and exit your system before you are aware if not properly protected.

   By analyzing disparate data from security products, endpoints, servers, and network devices and traffic, strong security monitoring solutions can pinpoint patterns and protect your business from this kind of multiple-faceted cyber-attack. Strong monitoring systems collect, correlate, analyze and alert based upon information from your entire system.

5. SIEM Security monitoring provides a method for Forensic analysis in the event of a security breach.

   With the growing employment of APTs, it’s critical to discover data breaches in the act and prevent them from reaching completion. Once discovered, it is important to be able to go to any historic point and time and analyze all relevant information and events to determine root cause.

   Defining, implementing and managing a security monitoring system is no small task and requires constant oversight. Partnering with a trusted security solutions partner can free up valuable internal resources to focus on other key corporate priorities. The true cost of defining, implementing and managing a security monitoring system includes weeks of training, policy definition, implementation, constant tuning, monitoring, and maintenance. These hidden costs are often the reason by internal monitoring projects fail and why outsourcing is often a better solution.

   Prime Infoserv is an expert security solution provider that helps companies manage their security. Solutions range from security risk assessments, audits, managed security, projects and security products from leading vendors.

   For more details, Contact with our SIEM expert at: info@primeinfoserv.com