How do you feel about IT compliance, and what does it mean for your organization?
Does it seem necessary or just downright daunting? After all, ensuring compliance means long hours of work for your IT team, given the processing and reviewing of such high volumes of logs.
Maintaining all those standards and regulations may seem overwhelming, but they protect your data and your organization's reputation. Most importantly, maintaining compliance affects your ability to operate and provide services in many industries.
Being IT compliant is incredibly important. It means your organization is a mature business that’s able to maintain the highest standards of integrity. In short, IT compliance proves that your organization is trustworthy.
Fortunately, some solutions can simplify the process of getting there, specifically when using security information and event management (SIEM) technology.
Let’s discuss what we mean by IT cybersecurity compliance and how a SIEM can support your compliance-focused statutory requirements.
What is IT Compliance?
As shown in a recent study performed by Hyperproof, 61% of cybersecurity experts employed by large organizations state that they have experienced at least one compliance lapse in the last three years.
Each of those lapses incurs significant costs to the business. This is why IT compliance plays a crucial role, no matter what your business is and what kind of industry you're in.
To better understand compliance, you need to understand frameworks. A framework provides a common structure and language to organize and express compliance with an organization's requirements.
An IT Compliance Framework Example
One such compliance framework is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-53 framework, which is made up of 18 families of “controls.” These controls guide how to test and monitor policies, processes, and systems.
As an example, one control from the Audit family of NIST 800-53, AU-8a, requires that an organization reviews and analyzes information system audit records for indications of inappropriate or unusual activity.
Several steps must be taken to accomplish this:
- A threshold must be agreed upon of what will be audited
- Auditing must be enabled on the system
- Collection and consolidation of audit logs must occur
- A review and analysis of audit logs must be performed
But there is still more to do; what if the analysis identifies something is wrong?
Now you have an incident which means your organization will also need:
- Incident response procedures
- Incident tracking
- Evaluation of which events constitute the most significant risk or threat
- Having procedures in place which define how you handle security threats or mitigate risk
Although the above example is specific, the actual steps exist in almost every compliance framework, including IT Systems.
Meeting all of these requirements may seem like a great deal of work. But it doesn't have to be. With the right solution in place, many of them can be automated and simplified, making it easier to identify and eliminate potential risks in less time. It also means you can get ready to pass a compliance audit without fear of failing it.
Why is SIEM a Great Tool for Compliance?
Such a solution is called security information and event management. It concentrates on monitoring IT systems in real-time, collecting security log events, identifying deviations from the norm, and providing reports on security-related incidents and events.
SIEM solutions offer excellent visibility into existing threats. Combined with the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), they are also very effective in identifying new threats, often missed by conventional measures.
SIEM also facilitates a security threat assessment, which is very useful to conduct before your IT audit occurs. It will help you identify potential issues and vulnerabilities and give you the information needed to evaluate and eliminate them.
Automating Your Risk Management
Some time ago, the compliance rules stated that businesses should "review every event log." Today the phrase is replaced by "every event must be reviewed," meaning logs don't need to be checked manually by people but can be reviewed by automated tools.
No wonder 83% of respondents of the Hyperproof research said that in 2021 they plan to evaluate or purchase new solutions to streamline and automate their risk management and compliance processes. So it's not about whether to start using SIEM as a tool for your IT compliance. Instead, it's a question of which SIEM tool to use.
nLighten™: The Only Autonomous SIEM
At Cybraics, we offer a highly reliable, autonomous SIEM solution that utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to categorize, correlate and prioritize all available security data. Our solution automates 96% of the case creation, while our expert SOC team provides the human intelligence to cover the rest.
Ready to revolutionize your IT compliance with a SIEM that eliminates over 95% of false positives and helps to automate your cybersecurity initiative at large? Explore the features of our autonomous SIEM, today.
We maintain our internal compliance by using our products and following best practices learned while working on various industry and government projects. We don't collect personally identifiable information (PII) and maintain logical separation of customer data (compartmentalization), keeping our clients' data secure and compliant.
In the face of ever-growing cyber threats, having a reliable and efficient SIEM system is the most important thing you need to have. Contact us to start working on your IT compliance straight away.