XDR vs SIEM: What’s right for your business?

Much like your physical security, your organisation’s cybersecurity is incredibly important, and failing to consider it could put your business in jeopardy. 

Extended detection and response (XDR) and security information and event management (SIEM) are two major solutions that help organisations protect themselves against cybersecurity threats. They are both possible options to protect your organisation. With both options being valid, knowing which option is best for your business can be difficult.

In this blog, we will discuss the difference between XDR and SIEM and examine some of the key features and benefits of both. We’ll then discuss how you can choose the right solution for your business and how we can help you get started today.

What is XDR?

Extended detection and response (XDR) is a cybersecurity solution focusing on threat detection and response. XDR solutions tend to use many different security tools and services, including security information and event management (SIEM).

An XDR platform will analyse data from across your business’ infrastructure to detect and respond to threats and attacks more accurately and effectively. It works as a holistic tool that gives you a centralised view of what’s happening throughout your organisation. 

XDR is a tool that aims to boost your organisation’s security posture as a whole rather than tackling specific areas. It does so by reducing the amount of time it takes to detect and respond to cybersecurity breaches and incidents.

Key Features

There are a few key features to know about XDR that will help you further understand its place within your organisation —

• Unification: XDR combines many different security tools to create a unified platform that combines the best of each platform to strengthen the security response.
• Advanced Analytics: XDR platforms have advanced analytics tools that use the data gathered to quickly identify malicious activity.
• Automated Detection and Response: Rather than manually finding and stamping out threats, XDR does everything automatically and learns to prioritise specific threats through algorithms and new AI tools.
• Continuous Monitoring and Threat Hunting: XDR platforms will monitor continuously and seek for threats to ensure you’re always protected.

Benefits

There are a few key benefits to utilising an XDR solution within your organisation —

• Greatly Improved Threat Detection: XDR is the gold standard for threat detection because it gives you a holistic view across your organisation. This allows you to more effectively seek out, detect, and respond to threats.
• Faster Incident Response: This allows you to respond to incidents much more quickly, stamping out anything that could pose a threat.
• Reduced Complexity: XDR consolidates a multitude of security tools, simplifying them and allowing you to streamline operations without having to manage each security implementation separately.

What is SIEM?

Security information and event management (SIEM) brings together security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM) to reap the benefits of both.

Security information management involves collecting, analysing, and reporting events within log data from throughout your organisation, whereas security event management focuses on real-time monitoring and analysis of events instead of log data analysis.

By combining both, SIEM provides a centralised platform for collecting, analysing, and managing security data and events across your entire IT infrastructure.

Key Features

The key features of SIEM include —

• Log collection from diverse sources: The SIM side of SIEM is all about log collection and event analysis, using logs taken from throughout your organisation.
• Real-time event analysis: SEM lets you analyse events in real-time and use that analysis to detect threats.
• Alerting and Notifications: SIEM solutions will notify you whenever a specified event occurs, meaning you can swiftly take action.
• Compliance Reporting: SIEM solutions will also report on compliance to ensure you meet compliance security regulations.

Benefits

Here are the key benefits of SIEM —

• Centralised Visibility: SIEM brings together data to analyse and act on from throughout your IT infrastructure.
• Real-time threat detection: SIEM can detect threats in real-time due to its SEM capabilities and alerting.
• Forensic capabilities: Due to the nature of reporting that SIEM solutions use, you can use them to do forensic analysis and help take down threats by providing the information to the proper channels.

Choosing the Right Solution for Your Business

Choosing the right solution for your business can be tricky, as each solution has its own benefits for different businesses. Where XDR uses tools to find and respond to threats automatically, SIEM focuses on collecting data to detect security issues and patch them. 

Both of these solutions are useful and can be used together. However, the best way to know what you need is by conducting audits and strategising to determine what risks your organisation might face and how each solution can help you. Generally, a combination of the two is excellent, but there are some unique benefits to using both separately —

• Focus: Where XDR combines different security tools to find and respond to threats automatically, SIEM collects and analyses logs from various sources to detect security issues and meet compliance requirements.
• Automation: XDR automates threat detection and response actions, whereas SIEM offers some automation but might need more integration for full automation.
• Integration: XDRintegrates with other security tools for a unified approach, and SIEM integrates well with diverse security products and systems.
• Threat Detection: XDR is great at finding advanced threats across different parts of the organisation, whereas SIEM detects security issues by analysing logs and events from various sources.
• Efficiency: XDR streamlines security tasks with centralised management and automation, whereas SIEM improves efficiency by centralising log analysis and incident response.

How We Can Help

Your organisation’s cybersecurity is critical, and XDR and SIEM can both provide a host of benefits to help your organisation protect itself from the threats that it may face in the future. By using either or both of these solutions, you can ensure you stay protected.

Contact us today if you want to start with XDR or SIEM and need help. Our experts are here to help and will ensure you start on the right foot.

Get in touch now and see how we can help.