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Want to hear a scary IT stat? Even though 60% of small businesses believe a cyberattack won’t target them, 34% of businesses reported a malware attack and 28% reported a ransomware attack in 2020.
This increasingly dangerous threat underlines the need for strong cybersecurity measures, which is where tools like SIEM and SOAR come into play. While they both aim to enhance your organization’s cybersecurity stack, they each serve distinct functions that are tailored to specific organizational needs.
But how are you supposed to know which is right for your organization if you don’t know what the major differences between SOAR and SIEM are? So, let’s get into it.
What is SIEM?
SIEM, which stands for Security Information and Event Management, is a cybersecurity system that’s used to consolidate, analyze, and store security-related data from a variety of data sources within an organization. By storing logs and events, SIEM gives organizations actionable insights into activity on its network that could pose a potential security threat, allowing them to respond to it before it’s able to do any harm to the organization.
While SIEM tools offer a host of features, here are some of the main ones that may be invaluable to your organization.
Real-time threat detection and alerts
A main feature of SIEM systems is continual network activity monitoring, and alerting the IT department of any anomalies that may be an indication of potential breaches. The system can cross-reference data from a variety of sources to find patterns that could indicate a potential attack.
These alerts can be the difference between catching a problem early on and spending millions of dollars and months trying to fix a security problem. For instance, if the system sees 100 failed login attempts across different devices in a short timeframe, that may indicate a brute-force attack and trigger an alert to the necessary person to take care of the threat.
Log management and compliance reporting
For organizations that need to meet regulatory standards (like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS), SIEM simplifies this process by centralizing log collection and analysis from across the IT ecosystem. Using SIEM allows organizations to generate detailed, compliance-ready reports, making audits and regulatory adherence a breeze…or at least a lot easier.
For example, a healthcare provider that uses SIEM can monitor access to patient records, flag unauthorized attempts, and generate comprehensive reports with these records, maintaining adherence to the strict HIPAA regulations. This not only helps organizations stay within compliance requirements but also helps them build trust with customers thanks to their commitment to safeguarding sensitive data.
What is SOAR?
SOAR, which stands for Security Orchestration Automation and Response, is an acronym that refers to a tool (or set of tools) designed to streamline and automate responses to security incidents. So while SIEM is focused on gathering and analyzing data, SOAR puts more emphasis on efficiently handling potential threats by carrying out workflows and automating repetitive security tasks.
Through the ability to integrate with a variety of IT security tools, SOAR gives organizations the ability to quickly and efficiently respond to potential incidents, freeing up the IT team to focus on more pressing issues.
Let’s talk about the main features of a SOAR system.
Automation of repetitive tasks
SOAR can help organizations automate security tasks that may eat away at their IT department’s valuable time, like analyzing potential threat alerts and network data to test the validity of that threat alert. Then, if/when a threat is determined to be real, SOAR can automatically initiate the response plan and remove any human delay.
For example, instead of the IT team manually investigating a suspicious login, SOAR can flag it, block access, and notify the security team, saving valuable time and effort.
Incident management and playbook-driven responses
In the previous example, SOAR saves the IT team time by cutting out the manual labor required for repetitive tasks. But it’s also an example of SOAR working from a pre-defined playbook to handle a potential security incident efficiently.
Not only is SOAR able to manage simple, repetitive tasks, but it can also carry out more complicated tasks using pre-defined “playbooks”. These playbooks can give the system the exact steps to carry out based on another variable, like isolating a device based on the belief that it’s been infected, or resetting a user’s credentials if it appears they’ve been compromised.
This coordinated response prevents the escalation of potential issues and minimizes damage across the organization.
Integration with multiple security tools
You can boost the efficiency of SOAR when you connect it with other IT tools like firewalls, SIEM systems (yes, the two can be used together), antivirus software, or just about any other IT tool you can think of. SOAR can tie it all together, creating a unified security environment where you can control everything.
For instance, SOAR can pull data from an SIEM system and use it to make endpoint security decisions through an EDR system. Before SOAR, you may have needed to figure out how to connect the two via an API or webhook (which can get complicated and require developers), but now you’d be able to manage everything under one umbrella.
What is SOAR used for?
SOAR’s main purpose is automating and carrying out response plans to security incidents, making labor-intensive processes much simpler. SOAR can analyze a large volume of emails to identify potential security issues, automatically flagging threats like phishing attempts or potential viruses, and isolating these affected inboxes for closer review.
In high-alert environments that have large volumes of potential threats, SOAR can efficiently manage them by prioritizing incidents based on their severity, ensuring that potential critical threats are addressed right away.
What’s the difference between SIEM and SOAR?
While SIEM and SOAR both aim to improve organizations’ cybersecurity systems, their core purposes and how they carry this mission out are different. The main differences between SOAR and SIEM are their focus and the level of automation you can employ.
Let’s explore each of these differences more in-depth.
Main focus
SIEM is primarily focused on the process of collecting, analyzing, and correlating log data from anywhere within an organization’s systems. In other words, SIEM focuses on identifying and alerting possible threats in real-time.
SOAR, on the other hand, really shines once that possible threat has been detected. It focuses on automating the response to that threat, which reduces the need for manual intervention and ensures consistency in how an organization handles possible security incidents.
Level of automation
Another key aspect of how SOAR is different from SIEM is their level of automation. SOAR allows organizations to heavily automate both repetitive tasks as well as more complex security tasks. Handling these tasks, such as threat investigation, triage, and even remediation while reducing the need for human input can transform an organization’s security while also helping stay within the IT budget.
SIEM still does allow for a little bit of automation when it comes to alerts and insights, but it still relies heavily on security professionals to step in to analyze data or initiate responses. SIEM automation is generally limited to generating notifications/alerts and/or reports.
Protect your network in the most efficient way
When it comes down to it, SIEM and SOAR each serve distinct yet complementary purposes in an organization’s cybersecurity strategy. SIEM is widely used to aggregate and analyze data from all over an organization’s IT network, while SOAR is best suited to automate and initiate security responses to threats. That’s why for those organizations that have the budget, using them together ensures that they have all sides covered.
If you’d like to simplify your IT security management, consider using an all-in-one RMM tool that will give you maximum coverage through security integrations. Take the first step toward full network security with a free 30-day trial of Atera today!
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