Whether you are just starting to grow your organization’s security program, or are looking to optimize your current setup, outsourcing your Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) to a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) may be the right move for you.
Why? Monitoring your own SIEM in your own SOC is a challenge. The majority of the those surveyed in a recent study suggested the biggest constraint to full utilization of their SOC was staffing. 70% of those polled stated retention among their SOC employees was less than five years. Another survey reported that an average of 41% of alerts that would be beneficial to investigate are ignored due to a lack of available SOC bandwidth. This is – no pun intended – alarming, as any one of those alerts could be the signal that a cyber attack or data breach is in progress, but no one is available to respond.
Outsourcing your SIEM relieves the concerns about staffing, monitoring, and response, while offering superior flexibility, scalability, and expertise. Let’s learn more about the benefits of outsourcing.
Scalability
Managing your SIEM is a full-time process that involves hiring people to build and manage the tools, as well as respond to incoming alerts. The hiring process is time-consuming and costly, difficult to scale effectively, and can distract the analysts you do have on staff as they onboard and train new personnel. Outsourcing your SIEM management to an MSSP provides your organization the opportunity to leverage qualified staff at a moment’s notice – ensuring you have ample coverage during times of increased activity and alerts. More qualified analysts monitoring your SIEM results in a shorter Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) for potential security issues, as well as emerging network issues. Nothing gets missed.
Outsourcing your SIEM management also provides your organization with the benefits of 24/7 coverage without the headaches of staffing, equipping, and managing a round-the-clock team internally. Utilizing an MSSP to manage your SIEM also gives you access to highly capable individuals with experience in a wide variety of situations and tools, a depth of resources that may not otherwise be available to you. An MSSP may also be able to troubleshoot any configurations or upgrades that may have widespread impact, which often requires the assistance of a vendor’s professional services team when internally managed. This kind of escalation support may not be readily available – or is too costly – for individual customers, but the economies of scale you enjoy with an MSSP put this level of service within easier reach.
Cost Effective
One of the major benefits to outsourcing SIEM management is the cost savings. By outsourcing your SIEM management, you eliminate virtually all capital expenditures, since your MSSP will be responsible for systems and storage. Typically, the only addition to your stack will be a virtual appliance to collect and stream data to your MSSP stack for monitoring, secure storage, and reporting. Here again, economy of scale is your friend: outsourcing SIEM management can also affords your organization the opportunity to access enterprise-grade security solutions at more affordable pricing than you may be able to secure on your own. Your investment becomes a predictable monthly operating expense, without the worry of system upgrade costs, fixed asset obsolescence, or hardware maintenance emergencies.
Perspective and Expertise
An outsourced SIEM also brings benefits by bringing a fresh perspective, as your MSSP engagement will begin with asset discovery. Identifying assets and configurations on your network you may have been unaware of provides you the opportunity to implement any desired fixes or network changes to streamline and optimize your operation – in addition to ensuring that all potential points of failure or compromise are captured and monitored.Â
This fresh perspective and wealth of experience also helps your organization when it’s time to integrate the SIEM to your service stack, including any older systems or custom tools that may require extra engineering. Because niche or antiquated systems may lack sufficient relevant documentation, having engineers who have worked in various environments gives your organization an advantage when it comes to advanced troubleshooting and brainstorming solutions. It’s relatively easy to integrate SIEM monitoring with widely used applications like Office 365. But if you have legacy systems or custom applications, out-of-the-box connectors likely will not be available. An MSSP’s experience in a wide range of programming languages, interfaces, and operating systems can fast-track the integration process.Â
And for all systems – old or new – an MSSP can also provide you the opportunity to integrate and leverage cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to greatly improve your SIEM’s monitoring and response capabilities, which might be impractical or difficult to achieve on your own with an internally managed SIEM.Â
Conclusion
Outsourcing SIEM management may be the better option for your organization, saving you time, money, and the headaches that come with managing a SIEM and staffing a SOC to monitor it. By outsourcing your SIEM management to a managed security services provider, your business has the opportunity to focus on what you care about while cutting costs and improving security. Â
If you would like to learn more about the business advantages and peace of mind that come with outsourcing SIEM management, contact ISA Cybersecurity today.
