A Pragmatic Approach to SIEM: Buy for Compliance, Use for Security

Dr. Anton Chuvakin,
Author and IT Security Instructor

A Pragmatic Approach to SIEM:
Buy for Compliance, Use for Security

WHITE PAPER

Introduction
Recent economic troubles might have something to do with In more recent years, several different trends—namely
the fact that many organizations today seek to establish changes in the regulatory landscape and a shift of attacks
only the bare minimum level of security. To be more pre- to the application level—have led to the evolution of the
cise, they try to do what they think is the bare minimum. SIEM and log management space. These tools are now used
In fact, their belief that security “due diligence” can be for overall compliance management, user tracking, applica-
reduced to the level prescribed by regulations such as the tion security monitoring, compliance auditing and even
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is fraud detection. They also continue to be used for opera-
more common than ever. Unfortunately, the results of this tional monitoring and issue troubleshooting.
flawed thinking include security breaches and other damag- Let’s define what SIEM and log management tools are and
ing events. what they do.
This trend toward establishing the minimum required level Security information and event management covers
of security has affected many security safeguards, including relevant log collection, aggregation, normalization and
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and log retention, context data collection, alerting, analysis (cor-
management. Most organizations simply deploy these tech- relation and prioritization), presentation (reporting and
nologies to place a check in the compliance check box. In visualization), security-related workflow, and relevant secu-
this paper we will take a look at this disturbing trend and rity content. Typical uses for SIEM tools center on network
provide useful guidance for maximizing the value of SIEM security, data security and regulatory compliance.
and log management tools, while focusing on protecting On the other hand, log management includes compre-
systems and data—not on simply checking the compliance hensive log collection, original log retention, analysis,
check box. presentation (search, reporting, and visualization), related
But first, let’s get more familiar with the background of workflow, and relevant content such as reports and search
SIEM products. Even though organizations have had the queries. Log management usage is broad and covers all pos-
need to collect, manage and analyze computer log data sible applications for log data across IT and even beyond
for as long as computers have existed, dedicated Security information technology—but certainly includes security and
Information and Event Management (SIEM) products only compliance use.
emerged on the market in the late 1990s. Later, dedicated To summarize, SIEM focuses on security while log manage-
log management tools emerged to address broad log reten- ment focuses on broad use of log data. More specifically,
tion and log review requirements across all of IT, and not SIEM tools include correlation and other real-time analysis
just the traditional security space. functionality, which is useful for real-time monitoring. In
Although the primary purpose for SIEM was to reduce comparison, log tools often focus on advanced search across
network IDS “false positives” and to make sense of other all log data. Today, select tools combine select capabilities
security alerts and event records, these products often did of SIEM and log management in a single product or product
so at the cost of increased product and integration complex- suite.
ity. As a result, these tools were only used by the largest
organizations because they were willing to invest time in
learning how to operate their SIEM frameworks. In addition,
such use was mostly limited to network security.

2 | WHITE PAPER | A Pragmatic Approach to SIEM

Which One Is For you?

At this point you may be asking, “Which product is for
Let’s further examine the defining features of SIEM.
me?” The answer is easy: if you have logs (which you do
Most organization will look for these features when
if you have computers), you need a log management tool.
choosing an SIEM product. The features include:
And if you want to make use of these logs for security
monitoring, you also need SIEM capabilities. However, 1. Log and Context Data Collection. The ability to col-
you will learn later in this paper that trying to use lect logs and context data using a combination of
advanced and near real-time monitoring features of SIEM agent-based and agent-less methods.
tools before you’re able to reliably collect log data rarely 2. Normalization. The ability to convert most original
results in success. logs into a universal format, usable for cross-source
When choosing a tool, it may be helpful to first begin by reporting and correlation.
identifying the problem you’re trying to solve with it. Over 3. Correlation. Rules-based, statistical or algorithmic
the years, the following areas where SIEM and log manage- and other methods of relating different events to each
ment tools can deliver value have emerged: other and events to contextual data.
1. Security, detective, and investigative. Sometimes also 4. Notification/alerting. The ability to trigger notifica-
called threat management, this area focuses on detecting tions or alerts to operators or managers. Common
and responding to attacks, malware infection, data theft alerting mechanisms include email, SMS, or even
and other security issues. It may be useful to divide this Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
area into monitoring and detection of security issues, and messages.
investigation and forensic analysis of security incidents.
5. Prioritization. Different features that help distinguish
2. Compliance, regulatory (global) and policy (local). This important events from less critical security events,
area focuses on satisfying the requirement of various for example by correlating security events with vul-
laws, mandates and frameworks. Most of these mandates nerability data, or asset and identity information.
have the intent of improving security, so there is a lot of
6. Real-time View of Security. Security-monitoring
overlap between this area and the previous one.
dashboards and displays that security operations per-
3. Operational, system and network troubleshooting and sonnel use to easily review current system and user
administration. This area applies mostly to log manage- activity.
ment, and has to do with investigating system problems
7. Reporting. The ability to generate scheduled and
as well as monitoring the availability of systems and
as-needed reports to gain historical views of data
applications.
collected by the SIEM product. Some products also
The above three drivers likely cover nearly 100 percent of have a mechanism for distributing reports to security
SIEM and log management deployments today. It is worth personnel, either by e-mail or a dedicated web portal.
noting that the most common scenarios for SIEM deploy- SIEM reporting relies on parsing and normalizing log
ments today are “buy for compliance, use for compliance” data.
and “buy for compliance, use for security,” or a combina-
8. Security Role Workflow. Incident management fea-
tion of the two. When used in combination, the SIEM or
tures that allow security personnel to open incident
log management tool is purchased for a tactical compliance
cases, perform investigative triage, and perform
project, and over time is used to solve many other problems.
other security operations tasks using automation or
Let’s review this in detail.
partial automation.

A Pragmatic Approach to SIEM | WHITE PAPER | 3

Deploying and Using SIEM
As organizations face complex security, regulatory and oper-
ational issues, the tools that help them address those issues
Pragmatic Approach to SIEM
have grown in complexity as well. As a result, companies Given the trend of focusing on bare minimum security, the
sometimes have trouble planning, deploying and then using pragmatic approach to SIEM for many organizations can be
SIEM and log management tools effectively. In this paper summarized as “buy for compliance, use for security (and
we will share a few proven strategies for implementing and IT operations as well).” Let’s review how you follow this
deploying SIEM and log management tools, both for satisfy- approach for achieving security success and not just auditor
ing regulatory compliance mandates and beyond. approval.
So, how can you use SIEM effectively? You have to do Many Chief Security Officers (CSOs) have found out that
some planning before you can answer this question. This compliance initiatives and other projects driven by “the
planning includes the most important concept for deploying fear of auditors” can be funded more easily than pure data
and utilizing a SIEM—the concept of a “use case.” protection and “the fear of hackers” projects. Even though
Originating in the software development industry, the this trend may reverse itself in the future, today it is a fact
term “use case”1 simply denotes a description of how the of life. Recent analyst estimates show that 70 percent to 80
user uses a system to solve a particular problem. For exam- percent of SIEM and log management implementations are
ple, a use case for SIEM can center on satisfying the PCI driven by compliance needs.
DSS requirements or enabling the incident response team to Here is how to follow the pragmatic approach in instances
track down a compromised IT asset. where compliance drives SIEM and log management
Since SIEM and log management tools are useful for solv- implementation:
ing a wide range of IT problems, it makes sense to approach First, compile a list of regulations you must comply with,
your SIEM purchase with your particular problem set in focusing particular attention on areas where an SIEM or log
mind. For example, if your organization wants to build a management tool can be useful. In many cases, the list may
security operations center (SOC), your choice of SIEM will contain only one regulation, but that one regulation is one
be very different from an organization that wants to sim- you absolutely must address.
ply review server logs for evidence of unauthorized access Second, whenever practical, you should then review other
in order to comply with a regulation. Similarly, speeding possible goals that SIEM can help you achieve. Deciding
up your incident response routines calls for a different log whether SIEM satisfies a critical business need, such as “buy
management tool than one you’d use for HIPAA reporting as an enabling technology for your SOC,” is an essential step.
(though better incident handling practices would almost Third, you must decide whether you are prepared to work
certainly help you safeguard health information). to make your SIEM tool solve your problem, whether for
The entire range of SIEM use cases fits in the three cat- compliance or other needs. Despite help from the vendor
egories we mention above: and possibly consultants, there are additional tasks you’ll
have to perform to make SIEM work.
1. Security, detective, and investigative;
Now, acquire and implement the SIEM solution. This is
2. Compliance, regulatory (global) and policy (local); and where you work jointly with the vendor in order to build
3. Operational, system and network troubleshooting and your initial implementation for regulatory compliance, such
administration. as PCI DSS.
Before we consider a few SIEM use cases in detail, let’s Now, start actually using SIEM for both the “letter and
define what we called a pragmatic approach to SIEM. spirit” of the regulation. This step is the most important
one in the approach—one of the biggest mistakes organiza-
tions make in this area is thinking that simply owning an
SIEM tool makes them compliant. In reality, building daily
operational procedures and processes to go with your SIEM


is the only way to do that. Sadly, few people remember that environment, you need to focus on protecting the data and
PCI DSS prescribes a large set of periodic tasks, from annual monitoring all access to it.
to daily. Reviewing logs daily is the most well known exam- Even though logging is present in all PCI requirements,
ple of such a practice, not just “having logs.” the PCI DSS also contains Requirement 10, which is dedicat-
Finally, expand the use case beyond compliance. Tips for ed to logging and log management. Under this requirement,
expanding deployment and solving other problems with your logs for all system components must be reviewed at least
SIEM tool are provided in the next section. For example, daily—a key operational procedure that is necessary for
you can quickly improve your security capability for inci- compliance! These reviews must include logs of servers that
dent response and forensics—the easiest and most common perform security functions, such as intrusion-detection
security use of log management and SIEM tools beyond systems and authentication, authorization, and account-
compliance. ing protocol servers. PCI Requirement 10 is a very common
Given the obvious benefits to this approach, it is surpris- reason why organizations research and look into purchasing
ing that more organizations don’t follow it. Some simply SIEM and log management tools today.
choose to procure a tool, connect it to the network and Further, the PCI DSS states that the organization must
never actually use it—whether for security or compliance ensure the integrity of its logs by implementing file integ-
purposes. Such organizations will be surprised to discover rity monitoring and using change detection software on logs
they are neither compliant nor secure, as this level of imple- (in addition to other key files) to ensure that existing log
mentation provides none of the benefits of SIEM. It’s also data cannot be changed without alerting security personnel.
interesting to note that many of the organizations studied It also states that logs from in-scope systems must be stored
in the Verizon Data Breach report2 that were breached had for at least one year. Broader security monitoring is also
all the evidence of the breach in their logs and available present in Requirement 11 of the PCI DSS.
since the day of the breach.
So, build the urgency for SIEM using regulatory compli-
ance, then start taking the regulation to heart by using the
HIPAA/HITECH
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
tools for compliance and data security. From that point,
of 1996 (HIPAA) outlines relevant security standards for
expand the use case to solve more problems within your
health information. As with PCI, the intent of HIPAA is to
organization. Remember, a box in the datacenter rack does
reduce risks, but in this case to sensitive health informa-
not make you compliant; a tool combined with people dili-
tion. Unlike payment data, however, health information
gently following operational procedures does.
cannot simply be deleted from storage, which certainly
As we mentioned above, compliance is often the main
complicates compliance with the regulation. The following
driver for SIEM deployment today. Let’s delve deeper in the
HIPAA requirements apply broadly to logging, log review
regulations and their impact on SIEM technology.
and security monitoring:
Section 164.308(a)(5)(ii)(C) “Log-in Monitoring” calls
PCI DSS for monitoring the systems touching patient information
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard applies for login and access. The requirement applies to “login
to all organizations that handle credit card transactions. attempts,” and implies login attempts that failed or
Since we talk about the letter and spirit of regulations, succeeded.
the spirit of PCI is in reducing the overall risk associated
Section 164.312(b) “Audit Controls” broadly covers audit
with payment card transactions. While complete elimina-
logging and other audit trails on systems that deal with
tion of sensitive payment card data for risk reduction is
sensitive health information. Review of such audit logs
a noble goal, achieving it today is unlikely for most mer-
seem to be implied by this requirement.
chants. As a result, after appropriately scoping your PCI DSS


Section 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(D) “Information System Activity
Review” prescribes review of various records of IT activi-
ISO2700x
ties such as logs, systems utilization reports, incident ISO27001, formally known as “Information technology—
reports and other indications of security-related activities. Security techniques—Information security management
systems—Requirements,” is a direct descendant of ISO17799
In addition, the NIST SP 800-66 document titled “An
and British Standard 7799. ISO specifies requirements for
Introductory Resource Guide for Implementing the Health
managing the security of information systems. The stan-
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Security Rule”
dard also prescribes audit logging and audit log review and
details more specific log management requirements for
retention.
securing electronic protected health information. Section
For example, ISO27001 mentions that “audit logs should
4.1 of this document describes the need for regular review
be turned on for security events, user activities, and excep-
of information system activity, such as audit logs, access
tions. They should be kept for a predetermined period of
reports and security incident-tracking reports.
time.” (section A.10.10.1 of ISO/IEC 27001 Information
A recent enhancement to HIPAA is called the Health
Security Management Systems – Requirements). However,
Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health
the standard provides no further guidance regarding what
Act or HITECH Act. The act seeks to further “address the
details must be recorded in logs or how long the logs should
privacy and security concerns associated with the electronic
be retained.
transmission of health information.”
The standard does make references to reviewing audit logs
and security monitoring without providing operational level
NERC details about them. Despite that, organizations that plan to
North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) pub- certify their compliance with ISO27001 are likely to deploy
lishes Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards that SIEM or log management tools.
contain important information security requirements. The Overall, this summary indicates that many mandates have
spirit of NERC is in maintaining the operation of the critical similar requirements with regards to log management and
bulk electric system. In the case of NERC, clearly the focus security monitoring. This simply means that complying
is on system uptime and not on information confidentiality with one regulation will get you a long way toward comply-
as it is in PCI DSS and HIPAA. ing with other current and future regulations. Also, one
Among the CIPs, there are requirements about logging, of the most important things to remember from reviewing
alerting and log review, as well as broader security monitor- these regulations is that simply deploying a tool, even an
ing. For example, Requirement CIP-005-1 R3.2 states that advanced SIEM tool, does nothing for compliance unless
“security monitoring process(es) shall detect and alert for you use it. Good auditors will check for processes and pro-
attempts at or actual unauthorized accesses. These alerts cedures built around tools in order to satisfy the spirit of
shall provide for appropriate notification to designated regulations; they won’t just look at blinking lights in the
response personnel. Where alerting is not technically fea- datacenter.
sible, the Responsible Entity shall review or otherwise assess
access logs for attempts at or actual unauthorized accesses
at least every ninety calendar days.” In most cases, the
effort focuses on issue detection and rapid investigation,
and not on the long-term data theft breach investigation.
Additional security monitoring requirements are also
defined in the NERC CIP standards.


“Compliance+”: Where to Go of skilled personnel with effective SIEM tools. Fortunately,
most organizations have monitoring tools for operational
Next? visibility—uptime monitoring. It is important to note that
After the initial regulatory challenges are addressed, what many organizations will not ever be large enough to justify
do you do next? Given the scope of regulations shown having a full Security Operations Center (SOC). At the same
above, your organization would already have a fairly robust time, having a person or a team dedicated to ongoing peri-
security monitoring program, backed up by periodic process- odic security monitoring will likely help most organizations.
es, review procedures and an exception handling process. We can benefit from the past experiences of organiza-
It is likely that you would not be surprised that unau- tions that have gone beyond compliance to learn about the
thorized access to servers is covered by a particular numerous possible mistakes and pitfalls that might occur.
regulation. It is also likely that unauthorized changes in We will first present a few general tips for succeeding based
your environment will be reduced to a minimum. Deploying on these past experiences, and then categorize common
integrity checking systems mandated by PCI DSS, and then mistakes that organizations committed while doing so.
diligently using them, will allow your organization to be First, if you deploy for compliance, make sure your tools
constantly aware of what happens in your environment. If operationalize and adopt the regulation as the framework.
unauthorized changes are detected that indicate an inci- Don’t simply put a checkmark in the compliance checkbox.
dent, your incident response process will be triggered into Second, always operationalize SIEM and log management
action. tools in phases. One common approach is to go from tradi-
In addition, complying with regulations has likely enabled tional server and firewall logs to application logs, and from
you to keep an eye on the sensitive data that flows in and collection to review to near real-time monitoring.
out of your environment. Hopefully, you have applied the Third, always keep the use cases—what you’re trying
safeguards not only to regulated data but also to data inter- to achieve with an SIEM tool—in mind. Think about them
nally considered sensitive. when using and expanding the use of your SIEM. Even if
For example, an organization may choose to fully adopt compliance is a primary SIEM driver, focusing on outcomes
PCI DSS compliance and invest time in developing their useful for your business will give you more success on your
daily log review practices, tying them to incident response journey to better data security.
plans and educating developers on writing better software
that deals with payment data. In fact, some organizations Common Pitfalls in Using
have been known to build their entire security programs
on top of PCI DSS guidance. Clearly this approach will allow SIEM for Regulatory
them to benefit from SIEM and log management tools that Compliance
they already own.
The biggest logging, SIEM and compliance mistake is simply
The next step is to improve the incident response process
this: thinking that to be compliant you must only collect
so that it can react even faster. While regulations prescribe
logs in a log management tool. This is one of the most egre-
some incident response practices such as having an inci-
gious errors you can make. Simply reading the text of most
dent response plan, being ready for any incident, including
regulations will reveal the additional items you need to
a zero-day attack, takes more work and more operational
address, such as log review, log protection, logging specific
maturity that goes beyond compliance.
details for various events, handling exceptions and many
The next step beyond compliance might be to improve
others.
the security monitoring process. Simply buying a tool that
PCI DSS prescribes log review and log protection, HIPAA
is capable of enabling such monitoring does not create a
calls for monitoring, NERC asks for incident process ease.
monitoring capability; this capability requires a combination
Not a single regulation is solely about storing logs.


A second common mistake is focusing on the letter of
regulations, and not their intended spirit. The best way to
About the Author
summarize it is: if you focus on security, you have a shot Dr. Anton Chuvakin (http://www.chuvakin.org) is a recog-
at being compliant and secure; if you only focus on compli- nized security expert in the field of log management and
ance, you probably will not be secure and will be out of PCI DSS compliance. He is an author of the books “Security
compliance. Just ask the victims of recent breaches who Warrior” and “PCI Compliance” and a contributor to
were justifiably found to be out of compliance. “Know Your Enemy II,” “Information Security Management
Finally, although the siloed approach to regulations is the Handbook” and others. Anton has published dozens of
unfortunate norm today, that does not make it the right papers on log management, correlation, data analysis, PCI
approach. Given the large overlap across regulations in what DSS, and security management (see the list at www.info-
they mandate relative to audit logging, security monitor- secure.org). His blog http://www.securitywarrior.org is one
ing, change detection, incident response and other security of the most popular in the industry.
practices, it makes sense to implement this superset of In addition, Anton teaches classes and presents at many
requirements. By not tackling regulations one-by-one, you security conferences across the world. He recently addressed
avoid wasting resources and causing delays. audiences in United States, UK, Singapore, Spain, Russia
and other countries. He works on emerging security stan-
dards and serves on the advisory boards of several security
Conclusion start-ups.
While some organizations continue to try to reduce security Currently, Anton is developing his security consulting
to some minimum baseline, this approach is not a recipe practice www.securitywarriorconsulting.com, focusing on
for customer trust and data protection. Many of the recent logging and PCI DSS compliance for security vendors and
challenges with SIEM and log management stem from the Fortune 500 organizations. Dr. Anton Chuvakin was formerly
fact that powerful SIEM technology is purchased to address a Director of PCI Compliance Solutions at Qualys. Previously,
a compliance mandate—and does so in a narrow and short- Anton worked at LogLogic as a Chief Logging Evangelist,
sighted fashion. Following our roadmap for effective use tasked with educating the world about the importance of
of SIEM tools for compliance and beyond will allow you to logging for security, compliance and operations. Before
avoid mistakes and gain all the benefits of your investment LogLogic, Anton was employed by a security vendor in a
in your SIEM or log management tool. strategic product management role. Anton earned his Ph.D.
In addition, you can expand the use of an SIEM tool degree from Stony Brook University.
beyond compliance to security and operational use cases,
focusing on improved incident response practices and mov-
ing to automated security monitoring that occurs in near
real-time. This approach is the only way to gain visibility,
and therefore control, over your ever-growing IT environ-
ment. This is also the only way to prepare for the onslaught
of virtualization and cloud computing, which will muddy
the waters of what specific information and IT assets need
to be protected.
The final word on succeeding with SIEM is this: start by
using regulatory guidance, take it to heart, operational-
ize it, and then expand it to solve “bigger and better“
problems. 1 For example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case
2 www.verizonbusiness.com/resources/security/reports/2009_databreach_rp.pdf


ABOUT TRIPWIRE
Tripwire is a leading global provider of IT security and compliance automation solutions that help businesses and
government agencies take control of their entire IT infrastructure. Thousands of customers rely on Tripwire’s integrated
solutions to help protect sensitive data, prove compliance and prevent outages. Tripwire® VIA™, the comprehensive
suite of industry-leading ﬁle integrity, policy compliance and log and security event management solutions, is the way
organizations can proactively achieve continuous compliance, mitigate risk and improve operational control through
Visibility, Intelligence and Automation. Learn more at www.tripwire.com and TripwireInc on Twitter.

©2010 Tripwire, Inc. | Tripwire is a registered trademark of Tripwire, Inc. All other product and company names are property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. | WPSIEM1a

A Pragmatic Approach to SIEM: Buy for Compliance, Use for Security

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to A Pragmatic Approach to SIEM: Buy for Compliance, Use for Security (20)

More from Tripwire (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

A Pragmatic Approach to SIEM: Buy for Compliance, Use for Security