EXPEL BLOG

Part I: How MDR can transform your SIEM investment

Security operations · 4 MIN READ · SCOUT SCHOLES · NOV 8, 2024 · TAGS: MDR / SIEM

A foundation for understanding the difference between a security incident and event management (SIEM) system and managed detection and response (MDR) 

TL;DR 

  • This is part one of a three-part blog series on how MDR can transform your SIEM tool investment
  • Understand the difference between a security incident event management (SIEM) system and managed detection and response (MDR)
  • Review the benefits of utilizing MDR to augment your SIEM capabilities 

 

This is part one of a three-part blog series: How MDR can transform your SIEM investment. You can find the full series here once published:

 

Security information and event management (SIEM) tools provide a centralized view of security data and events. They’re used widely by security teams, and are often paired with managed detection and response tools. According to 6sense, there are 24,000+ companies utilizing SIEM systems, with an estimated 39 provider companies splitting that market share. 

However, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to managing and maintaining a SIEM. And maintaining and scaling a SIEM efficiently and effectively is a challenge‌. It’s easy for log volumes to get out of control, with no way to utilize the rich data they provide. And more logs cost more money to store, which can quickly create a cycle of struggling to fully take advantage of everything your SIEM system has to offer.

Expel’s approach to working with SIEM systems is a bit unique, so we’re explaining how we support investigative decisions, out-of-the-box rules, custom detections, and SIEM insights reports as the leading MDR provider. 

SIEM & MDR basics

Expel MDR boosts SIEM solutions in many ways. First, it gives them the advanced threat detection and response capabilities that customers want (or think they already have) from their SIEM tool. This combination really supercharges the SIEM. It transforms it into a tool that ingests tons of logs and is a more responsive solution for identifying threats. 

Expel MDR also offers 24×7 support, provided by a team of highly skilled security professionals. The Expel team continuously monitors and analyzes security alerts—supported by advanced automation—to identify real threats. This is especially helpful with SIEM systems, because they store so many logs that a single team manually monitoring and investigating them is unrealistic. 

Finally, Expel MDR is customizable and gives orgs the security operations to support their needs. This lets security teams fill in critical gaps, and frees them up to focus on strategic security initiatives, rather than chasing down and investigating alerts. 

Defining SIEM and MDR capabilities and benefits 

Most SIEM tools primarily focus on event correlation and log analysis.  They collect and analyze data from multiple sources within the network, such as firewalls, servers, and applications, to detect security events and potential threats. They also aid in regulatory compliance by providing centralized logging, reporting, and auditing capabilities.

MDR services can augment SIEM technology by evaluating its alerts to understand their meaning. SIEM tools often come with built-in vendor alerts, and security operations teams can also create custom SIEM rules to analyze and summarize logs to align with the team’s objectives. However, this creates more work—to analyze the reporting and constantly tune the rules—to maintain accurate alerting. 

MDR services can integrate with SIEM tools to analyze the SIEM alerts, prioritize which alerts need attention, and enrich—with context—so that analysts fully understand the situation. MDR services offer their own detection libraries, which results in higher-fidelity alerts (and fewer SIEM alerts for the team to continuously tune). Together, the two improve a security team’s speed, effectiveness, and efficiency.

Benefits of adding MDR to your SIEM approach 

There are several benefits to adding an MDR to your security tech stack to coordinate with the SIEM systems you already have. 

 

Reducing false positives 

A big challenge with SIEM systems is false positives, which in turn drive alert fatigue. SIEM tools can quickly achieve a high false-positive rate with overly broad or cut-and-paste detections that aren’t tuned to their specific environment. Adding MDR to your security tech stack can reduce alert fatigue and high volumes of false positives by applying both technology and people to alert analysis. Humans are much better at identifying false positives, so selecting an MDR provider that uses real analysts to support their tech allows your security team to focus solely on what’s critical. 

Proactive threat hunting 

SIEM system log management capabilities are beneficial to MDR teams when it comes to identifying indicators of compromise (IOCs) and potential vulnerabilities. Combining the power of SIEM tool data aggregation and MDR’s human intelligence can help mitigate threats before they cause significant harm. Some MDR providers also offer regular hypothesis-based threat hunting that reviews historical data to identify undetected silent attacks. 

Regular threat hunting—achieved by enhancing your SIEM system capabilities with MDR—offers security teams an additional layer of protection and insights into their environment, creating a stronger defensive posture.

 

Continuous improvement and scalability 

Unlike a SIEM tool, which is a static logging service, MDR providers continuously evolve and adapt to emerging threats. Providers invest in research and development to ensure that they’re up to speed on the latest threats, since attackers never stop. This means that when new threats surface, your MDR provider shouldn’t require a complete overhaul to address it within your environment. 

This is the biggest way MDR can transform your SIEM tool capabilities—by adopting to what your SOC needs, when they need it. Adding MDR to the SIEM system already in your tech stack accelerates time-to-value and simplifies how you view tool alerts, giving you the answers you need sooner. On its own, a SIEM tool simply isn’t made for rapid change or speedy evolution. This isn’t a problem when it’s not being overextended, and is instead being supported by complimentary tech. 

In part two of this blog series, we’ll explore where SIEM and MDR can be applied to the attack lifecycle, before diving into the actual applications of how Expel MDR can transform your SIEM system investment in part three. 

 

This blog was originally published in August of 2023, and has been updated and republished.

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