Regulatory requirements
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SEMs are often sold to help satisfy U.S. regulatory requirements such as those of Sarbanes–Oxley, PCI-DSS, GLBA.[ citation needed ]
Security event management (SEM), and the related SIM and SIEM, are computer security disciplines that use data inspection tools to centralize the storage and interpretation of logs or events generated by other software running on a network. [1] [2] [3]
The acronyms SEM, SIM and SIEM have sometimes been used interchangeably, [3] : 3 [4] but generally refer to the different primary focus of products:
Many systems and applications which run on a computer network generate events which are kept in event logs. These logs are essentially lists of activities that occurred, with records of new events being appended to the end of the logs as they occur. Protocols, such as syslog and SNMP, can be used to transport these events, as they occur, to logging software that is not on the same host on which the events are generated. The better SEMs provide a flexible array of supported communication protocols to allow for the broadest range of event collection.
It is beneficial to send all events to a centralized SEM system for the following reasons:
Although centralised logging has existed for long time, SEMs are a relatively new idea, pioneered in 1999 by a small company called E-Security, [8] and are still evolving rapidly. The key feature of a Security Event Management tool is the ability to analyse the collected logs to highlight events or behaviors of interest, for example an Administrator or Super User logon, outside of normal business hours. This may include attaching contextual information, such as host information (value, owner, location, etc.), identity information (user info related to accounts referenced in the event like first/last name, workforce ID, manager's name, etc.), and so forth. This contextual information can be leveraged to provide better correlation and reporting capabilities and is often referred to as Meta-data. Products may also integrate with external remediation, ticketing, and workflow tools to assist with the process of incident resolution. The better SEMs will provide a flexible, extensible set of integration capabilities to ensure that the SEM will work with most customer environments.
| | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2018) |
SEMs are often sold to help satisfy U.S. regulatory requirements such as those of Sarbanes–Oxley, PCI-DSS, GLBA.[ citation needed ]
One of the major problems in the SEM space is the difficulty in consistently analyzing event data. Every vendor, and indeed in many cases different products by one vendor, uses a different proprietary event data format and delivery method. Even in cases where a "standard" is used for some part of the chain, like Syslog, the standards don't typically contain enough guidance to assist developers in how to generate events, administrators in how to gather them correctly and reliably, and consumers to analyze them effectively.
As an attempt to combat this problem, a couple of parallel standardization efforts are underway. First, The Open Group is updating their circa 1997 XDAS standard, which never made it past draft status. This new effort, dubbed XDAS v2, will attempt to formalize an event format including which data should be included in events and how it should be expressed.[ citation needed ] The XDAS v2 standard will not include event delivery standards but other standards in development by the Distributed Management Task Force may provide a wrapper.
In addition, MITRE developed efforts to unify event reporting with the Common Event Expression (CEE) which was somewhat broader in scope as it attempted to define an event structure as well as delivery methods. The project, however, ran out of funding in 2014.
In network management, fault management is the set of functions that detect, isolate, and correct malfunctions in a telecommunications network, compensate for environmental changes, and include maintaining and examining error logs, accepting and acting on error detection notifications, tracing and identifying faults, carrying out sequences of diagnostics tests, correcting faults, reporting error conditions, and localizing and tracing faults by examining and manipulating database information.
In computing, syslog is a standard for message logging. It allows separation of the software that generates messages, the system that stores them, and the software that reports and analyzes them. Each message is labeled with a facility code, indicating the type of system generating the message, and is assigned a severity level.
Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than its individual users. Enterprise software is an integral part of a computer-based information system, handling a number of business operations, for example to enhance business and management reporting tasks, or support production operations and back office functions. Enterprise systems must process information at a relatively high speed.
OSSIM (Open Source Security Information Management) is an open source security information and event management system, integrating a selection of tools designed to aid network administrators in computer security, intrusion detection and prevention.
Security information management (SIM) is an information security industry term for the collection of data such as log files into a central repository for trend analysis.
Log management is the process for generating, transmitting, storing, accessing, and disposing of log data. A log data is composed of entries (records), and each entry contains information related to a specific event that occur within an organization’s computing assets, including physical and virtual platforms, networks, services, and cloud environments.
Windows Vista contains a range of new technologies and features that are intended to help network administrators and power users better manage their systems. Notable changes include a complete replacement of both the Windows Setup and the Windows startup processes, completely rewritten deployment mechanisms, new diagnostic and health monitoring tools such as random access memory diagnostic program, support for per-application Remote Desktop sessions, a completely new Task Scheduler, and a range of new Group Policy settings covering many of the features new to Windows Vista. Subsystem for UNIX Applications, which provides a POSIX-compatible environment is also introduced.
In computing, logging is the act of keeping a log of events that occur in a computer system, such as problems, errors or just information on current operations. These events may occur in the operating system or in other software. A message or log entry is recorded for each such event. These log messages can then be used to monitor and understand the operation of the system, to debug problems, or during an audit. Logging is particularly important in multi-user software, to have a central overview of the operation of the system.
Prelude SIEM is a Security information and event management (SIEM).
TriGeo Network Security is a United States–based provider of security information and event management (SIEM) technology. The company helps mid market organizations proactively, protects networks and data from internal and external threats, with a SIEM appliance that provides real-time log management and automated network defense - from the perimeter to the endpoint.
LogLogic is a technology company that specializes in Security Management, Compliance Reporting, and IT Operations products. LogLogic developed the first appliance-based log management platform. LogLogic's Log Management platform collects and correlates user activity and event data. LogLogic's products are used by many of the world's largest enterprises to rapidly identify and alert on compliance violations, policy breaches, cyber attacks, and insider threats.
The Log Management Knowledge Base is a free database of detailed descriptions on over 20,000 event logs generated by Windows systems, syslog devices and applications. Provided as a free service to the IT community by Prism Microsystems, the aim of the Knowledge Base is to help IT personnel make sense of the large amounts of cryptic and arcane log data generated by network systems and IT infrastructures.
Sensage Inc. is a privately held data warehouse software provider headquartered in Redwood City, California. Sensage serves enterprises who use the software to capture and store event data so that it can be consolidated, searched and analyzed to generate reports that detect fraud, analyze performance trends, and comply with government regulations.
Security information and event management (SIEM) is a field within the field of computer security, where software products and services combine security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM). SIEM is the core component of any typical Security Operations Center (SOC), which is the centralized response team addressing security issues within an organization.
An information security operations center is a facility where enterprise information systems are monitored, assessed, and defended.
Reliable Event Logging Protocol (RELP), a networking protocol for computer data logging in computer networks, extends the functionality of the syslog protocol to provide reliable delivery of event messages. It is most often used in environments which do not tolerate message loss, such as the financial industry.
Storage security is a specialty area of security that is concerned with securing data storage systems and ecosystems and the data that resides on these systems.
NIST Special Publication 800-92, "Guide to Computer Security Log Management", establishes guidelines and recommendations for securing and managing sensitive log data. The publication was prepared by Karen Kent and Murugiah Souppaya of the National Institute of Science and Technology and published under the SP 800-Series; a repository of best practices for the InfoSec community. Log management is essential to ensuring that computer security records are stored in sufficient detail for an appropriate period of time.
Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is an emerging technology discipline that helps organizations aggregate, correlate, and analyze threat data from multiple sources in real time to support defensive actions. TIPs have evolved to address the growing amount of data generated by a variety of internal and external resources (such as system logs and threat intelligence feeds) and help security teams identify the threats that are relevant to their organization. By importing threat data from multiple sources and formats, correlating that data, and then exporting it into an organization’s existing security systems or ticketing systems, a TIP automates proactive threat management and mitigation. A true TIP differs from typical enterprise security products in that it is a system that can be programmed by outside developers, in particular, users of the platform. TIPs can also use APIs to gather data to generate configuration analysis, Whois information, reverse IP lookup, website content analysis, name servers, and SSL certificates.
Octopussy, also known as 8Pussy, is a free and open-source computer-software which monitors systems, by constantly analyzing the syslog data they generate and transmit to such a central Octopussy server. Therefore, software like Octopussy plays an important role in maintaining an information security management system within ISO/IEC 27001-compliant environments.