Six Advanced Cloud-native SIEM Use Cases

Throughout our series on cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) solutions, so far we’ve examined the features and benefits of cloud-native SIEM, the differences between legacy and cloud-native SIEM, and the various hosting models available. In this post, we’ll explore real-world use cases that can help organizations stay ahead of cyberthreats.

Insider threat detection

Cloud-native SIEM solutions can help discover indicators of insider threats via behavioral analysis. They can detect compromised credentials, anomalous privilege escalation, command and control communication, data exfiltration, rapid encryption, and lateral movement. Cloud-native SIEM solutions incorporate user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) capabilities with machine learning (ML) technology to quickly and accurately identify unusual patterns of activity that may indicate an insider threat.

Privileged access abuse

SIEM solutions can help identify and stop privileged access abuse by monitoring unwanted activity, third-party violations, departed employee activity, human errors, and overexposure of sensitive data. By correlating events across multiple data sources and applying advanced analytics, cloud-native SIEM can pinpoint potential misuse of privileged access and enable security teams to take swift action to mitigate risks.

Trusted entity compromise

To detect and stop trusted entity compromise, cloud-based SIEM can monitor user accounts, servers, network devices, and antivirus monitoring for signs of compromise or malicious behavior. By aggregating and analyzing data from various sources, cloud-native SIEM solutions can provide a holistic view of an organization’s security posture, enabling teams to identify vulnerabilities and prioritize their response efforts.

Threat hunting

Cloud-native SIEM solutions can assist in threat hunting by detecting environmental anomalies, organizing data around new vulnerabilities, comparing data to known attack patterns, integrating threat intelligence, testing hypotheses based on known risks, and searching for similar incidents in the past. With advanced analytics and data visualization capabilities, cloud-native SIEM enables security analysts to proactively search for threats and accelerate incident response times.

Data exfiltration detection

SIEM solutions can prevent data exfiltration through many methods. These include, but are not limited to, detecting backdoors, rootkits, and botnets, monitoring FTP and cloud storage traffic, examining windows events like secure message block and unexpected remote desktop protocol usage, overseeing web application usage, detecting email forwarding, identifying lateral movement, and ensuring mobile data security. By examining unusual behavior, observing unusual service starting and stopping, correlating events and applying advanced analytics, cloud-native SIEM solutions can quickly identify potential data exfiltration attempts and help organizations protect their sensitive information.

IoT security

Cloud-native SIEM solutions can help mitigate IoT threats by identifying denial-of-service attacks, managing IoT vulnerabilities, monitoring access control, overseeing data flow, identifying devices at risk, and spotting compromised devices. By integrating IoT security data into a centralized platform, cloud-native SIEM provides organizations with comprehensive visibility and control over their IoT environments, helping to safeguard against emerging threats.

Conclusion

Cloud-native SIEM solutions provide organizations with advanced capabilities to tackle a wide range of security challenges. Employing a cloud-native SIEM for these use cases helps organizations enhance their security posture and better protect their data, infrastructure, and users. As cybersecurity threats continue to evolve, adopting cloud-native SIEM can empower organizations to stay ahead of adversaries and effectively respond to a constantly evolving threat plane.

In our next post, we’ll conclude our series with a step-by-step guide to help you migrate from an on-premises SIEM to a cloud-native SIEM. Subscribe to the Exabeam blog for updates!