Observability Solutions Roundup Archive | Security Tools https://www.security-tools.com/category/observability/ Security Tools Tue, 28 Nov 2023 21:31:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.2 https://www.security-tools.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/cropped-updated-security-tools-logo-v2-32x32.png Observability Solutions Roundup Archive | Security Tools https://www.security-tools.com/category/observability/ 32 32 Best Infrastructure Monitoring Tools https://www.security-tools.com/best-infrastructure-monitoring-tools/ Tue, 28 Nov 2023 21:24:17 +0000 https://www.security-tools.com/?p=2667 Table of Contents Definition Importance Considerations when Choosing Tools Pros and Cons Best Infrastructure Monitoring Tools What is Infrastructure Monitoring? Today more than ever, consumers rely on technology for their communication, work, and entertainment. This means any downtime for these services imposes a high cost for software companies. In 2021, Meta lost nearly $100 million […]

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What is Infrastructure Monitoring?

Today more than ever, consumers rely on technology for their communication, work, and entertainment. This means any downtime for these services imposes a high cost for software companies. In 2021, Meta lost nearly $100 million in revenue during a disastrous six-hour outage, and it also lost numerous users who left for X (formerly Twitter), Discord, and other social media alternatives. 

Infrastructure monitoring tools allow businesses to maintain an exceptional and stable customer experience. These tools can diagnose, fix, and optimize all components of your infrastructure, including containers, physical servers, internet of things (IoT) devices, network devices, databases, and storage.

In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of infrastructure monitoring tools for your organization and what to look for in these tools. Then, we’ll introduce one of the best infrastructure monitoring tools on the market.

The Importance of Infrastructure Monitoring

Infrastructure monitoring is crucial to the performance of your infrastructure, as it ensures the availability, optimization, and security of your assets as you meet customer demand.

With the average cost of downtime reaching hundreds of thousands (on the low end) to millions of dollars, security teams can’t afford to stay in the dark about the overall health of their infrastructure. Infrastructure monitoring tools perform the following key tasks:

  • Alert teams of potential issues, minimizing downtime and the risk of critical failures
  • Provide historical analysis, helping organizations make informed decisions about resource allocation, energy consumption, and hardware usage
  • Identify unusual or suspicious activities within the infrastructure, aiding in the early detection of security threats and vulnerabilities

Infrastructure monitoring also offers a bird’s-eye view of your infrastructure, helping teams troubleshoot issues quickly and improve mean time to repair (MTTR).

Considerations when Choosing an Infrastructure Monitoring Tool

Selecting the best infrastructure monitoring tool requires thoroughly assessing various crucial factors. Consider the following when choosing an infrastructure monitoring tool for your business:

Scalability and compatibility

  • Ensure the tool can adapt to the growing needs of your organization.
  • Check if the tool supports your entire infrastructure or tech stack, whether it’s hosted in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid environment.

Ease of use and cost efficiency

  • Choose a user-friendly platform with an intuitive interface that is easy to set up and configure.
  • Evaluate total cost of ownership, maintenance costs, and return on investment (ROI).

Alerting, reporting, and customization

  • Prioritize robust alerts and customizable graphical reports.
  • Check if you can tailor the infrastructure monitoring tool to your needs.

The Pros and Cons of Infrastructure Monitoring Tools

Although infrastructure monitoring tools help teams ascertain overall system health, pinpoint errors, and improve systems, these tools have pros and cons. Examining the merits and shortcomings of infrastructure monitoring tools will help you select one that suits your business’s needs.

Pros

  • Optimizes infrastructure performance based on real-time data.
  • Analyzes historical data for trends and performance improvements.
  • Creates valuable resources for troubleshooting and technical documentation.

Cons

  • Setting up and managing infrastructure monitoring tools can be complex, expensive, and time-consuming.
  • Infrastructure monitoring tools can consume resources because a lot of planning is needed to successfully deploy them.
  • Poorly configured alerts may lead to false positives, alert fatigue, and missed issues.

Best Infrastructure Monitoring Tools

Below are some of the top infrastructure monitoring tools available.

AppDynamics by Cisco

San Jose, CA | 1984 | www.cisco.com

AppDynamics, now part of Cisco, provides application performance monitoring solutions. Its platform offers end-to-end visibility into application and infrastructure performance.

Features to highlight

  • Real-time monitoring and AI-powered insights.
  • Root cause detection and swift troubleshooting.
  • Comprehensive monitoring dashboards for visualization.

Key differentiators

  • Automatic system optimization and auto-remediation.
  • Visibility into your entire infrastructure and the ability to show dependencies.

CrowdStrike® Falcon LogScale™ by CrowdStrike

Austin, TX | 2011 | www.crowdstrike.com

CrowdStrike is known for its cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. Its infrastructure monitoring tool, Falcon LogScale, specializes in log analysis and security event monitoring.

Features to highlight

  • Real-time issue detection, search, and alerting.
  • Lightning-fast monitoring at affordable pricing.
  • Customizable dashboards for visualizing data.

Key differentiators

  • Real-time observability, log management, and threat detection capabilities.
  • Allows data ingestion of over 1PB per day without any negative impact on performance.

Datadog Platform by Datadog

New York | 2010 | www.datadoghq.com

Datadog is a renowned name in the world of infrastructure monitoring. Its platform offers comprehensive monitoring, analytics, and alerting for cloud-scale applications.

Features to highlight

  • User-friendly interface to enable easy adoption across teams.
  • Ease of deployment and integration with over 500 technologies.
  • Real-time infrastructure monitoring and one-click troubleshooting.

Key differentiators

  • Custom metric (such as customer behavior) tracking with the API or DogStatsD.
  • Machine learning that separates real issues from false alarms.

Dynatrace Log Management and Analytics Solution by Dynatrace

Massachusetts | 2005 | www.dynatrace.com

Dynatrace is a leader in the application performance monitoring space. Its platform provides full-stack monitoring and AIOps capabilities.

Features to highlight

  • Full-stack visibility and customizable dashboards.
  • Automatic analysis of logs and traces in real time.
  • Integrations for Kubernetes, OpenShift, and Docker monitoring.

Key differentiators

  • Insights into the business implications of events.
  • OneAgent SDK that offers custom monitoring capabilities.

Sematext Monitoring by Sematext

Brooklyn, NY | 2010 | www.sematext.com

Sematext provides monitoring and logging solutions for IT operations and application performance management. Its infrastructure monitoring tool, Sematext Monitoring, is a versatile solution that helps organizations gain insights into their infrastructure’s performance and reliability.

Features to highlight

  • Swift and seamless onboarding process.
  • Log management and analysis that provide insights into infrastructure health.
  • Regular process monitoring to uncover anomalies and improve performance.

Key differentiators

  • Integrates into many widely used application stacks, such as MySQL and MongoDB.
  • Scans servers for obsolete packages, discrepancies, and deviations.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor by SolarWinds

Austin, TX | 1999 | www.solarwinds.com

SolarWinds is a well-established provider of IT management solutions. Its Server & Application Monitor tool focuses on monitoring the health of servers and applications.

Features to highlight

  • Comprehensive server and application performance monitoring.
  • Root cause analysis and forecasts that facilitate capacity planning.
  • Customizable dashboards that aid data visualization.

Key differentiators

  • Carries out infrastructure dependency assessments.
  • Offers performance monitoring for Docker containers.

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring by Splunk

San Francisco, CA | 2003 | www.splunk.com

Splunk is well known for its data analytics and monitoring solutions. Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring provides visibility and insights into infrastructure performance.

Features to highlight

  • Real-time analytics from one integrated dashboard.
  • A blend of real-time data with historical data to provide context.
  • Network outage troubleshooting in Kubernetes to reduce downtime.

Key differentiators

  • Automatic Kubernetes monitoring with customizable charts.
  • Affordable comprehensive visibility while you scale your applications.

Zabbix 6.4 by Zabbix

Latvia | 2005 | www.zabbix.com

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring solution. The Zabbix platform provides robust infrastructure monitoring capabilities focusing on flexibility and customization. 

Features to highlight

  • Network and server monitoring in an open-source framework.
  • Entire infrastructure stack monitoring from one central platform.
  • Alerting and reporting with configurable dashboards.

Key differentiators

  • Offers multi-platform support and integrates easily with other apps via its Zabbix API.
  • Provides an external vault to secure sensitive information.

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]]> Best Threat Hunting Solutions https://www.security-tools.com/best-threat-hunting-solutions/ Fri, 20 Oct 2023 21:09:33 +0000 https://www.security-tools.com/?p=2618 Table of Contents Definition Importance Aiding Threat Hunting Capabilities Best Threat Hunting Solutions What Is Threat Hunting? Cyber threat hunting tools are specialized software programs and systems that actively seek, detect, and address cybersecurity threats. Cyber threat hunting tools collect and analyze data from network traffic, logs, and endpoint behaviors to create a comprehensive cybersecurity […]

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What Is Threat Hunting?

Cyber threat hunting tools are specialized software programs and systems that actively seek, detect, and address cybersecurity threats. Cyber threat hunting tools collect and analyze data from network traffic, logs, and endpoint behaviors to create a comprehensive cybersecurity landscape. By continuously monitoring the network, these tools discover unknown threat indicators and provide real-time alerts and response mechanisms, empowering security teams to make informed decisions and take prompt action.

In this article, you’ll learn why threat hunting is vital for improving your infrastructure’s security and how threat hunting tools can offer unique advantages compared to other cybersecurity solutions. You’ll also find a guide to top threat hunting solutions in the market.

Why Is Threat Hunting Important?

For many modern organizations, threat hunting serves as a critical front-line defense strategy. Businesses can use tools like security information and event management (SIEM) solutions, endpoint detection and response (EDR), and log management to seek and neutralize malicious activities. This proactive stance bolsters their defenses, shields sensitive data, and ensures a resilient digital environment with a strong security posture.

The CrowdStrike 2023 Threat Hunting Report revealed that the average eCrime breakout time has decreased to 79 minutes, which is down five minutes from 2022. Moreover, some attackers can breach systems in as few as seven minutes. Such statistics highlight the critical need for swift response and proactive threat hunting measures.

Once attackers have breached a system, they can establish a foothold that allows them to return and renew their attack. Organizations must root out persistent intruders who lurk within the system, prevent data compromise, and minimize damage. An inadequate response to cybersecurity breaches can cause organizations to suffer catastrophic data loss, damaged or unavailable systems, and noncompliance with regulations (such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, or the GDPR). This can then lead to financial penalties or losses, the erosion of customer trust, and a damaged business reputation.

How Do SIEM, EDR, and Log Management Tools Augment Your Threat Hunting Capabilities?

SIEM, EDR, and log management tools offer distinct functionalities in the evolving threat landscape. When combined, they create a formidable defense that bolsters threat hunting capabilities.

SIEM systems

  • Act as an organization’s security infrastructure central nervous system
  • Correlate data from multiple sources, providing security teams with a unified view of potential threats across the network
  • Identify abnormal patterns and activities to provide comprehensive visibility, early detection, and response to emerging threats

EDR solutions

  • Offer granular visibility into endpoints, identifying anomalous behaviors, malicious processes, and vulnerabilities
  • Swiftly detect threats in distributed work environments to ensure individual device protection
  • Enable rapid response and containment, minimizing the risk of breaches spreading within the network

Log management tools

  • Ensure the efficient collection, storage, and analysis of log data, fostering a seamless synergy
  • Facilitate incident investigations, compliance adherence, and a deep understanding of the scope of security incidents
  • Provide crucial information for piecing together the sequence of events during an attack, comprehending threat actor tactics, and mitigating future risks

These tools address the specific threat hunting needs in a complex digital landscape. Organizations gain the ability to detect and respond to sophisticated threats by combining network-wide context from SIEM, endpoint-focused visibility from EDR, and detailed event-based data from log management. This integrated approach detects threats more effectively and enables proactive threat hunting, reducing detection and response times. With this collective approach, organizations can catch critical indicators of compromise, preventing their exposure to potential breaches.

Best Tools to Augment Your Cyber Threat Hunting Capabilities

In this section, we’ll cover top-notch cyber threat hunting solutions currently available and explore their unique offerings.

Falcon Insight XDR by CrowdStrike

Austin, TX | 2011 | www.crowdstrike.com

CrowdStrike is a global cybersecurity leader, providing a cloud-native platform that has redefined modern security. With real-time threat intelligence, automated protection, and rapid deployment, CrowdStrike Falcon® Insight XDR safeguards enterprise endpoints, cloud workloads, and data. CrowdStrike Falcon Insight XDR offers:

  • Comprehensive visibility into endpoints, empowering rapid threat investigation and informed decision-making
  • AI-powered detection and alert prioritization, curated by top security experts
  • Swift response actions, including on-the-fly remote access and integrated CrowdStrike Falcon® Fusion security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) for enhanced efficiency

Falcon LogScale by CrowdStrike

Austin, TX | 2011 | www.crowdstrike.com

CrowdStrike® Falcon LogScale™ is a next-gen SIEM solution and is another core threat hunting product from CrowdStrike. It offers:

  • Security logging at petabyte scale for threat hunting, incident response, and compliance
  • An extensible query language and custom dashboards for in-depth analysis and real-time threat monitoring
  • Fine-grained, role-based access control (RBAC), easy deployment, and a user-friendly interface, ensuring rapid time-to-value and enhanced cybersecurity
  • The ability to search across hundreds of gigabytes of data in one second to empower threat hunting teams

Elastic Security by Elastic

Mountain View, CA | 2012 | www.elastic.co

Elastic is a prominent software company known for its Elasticsearch engine, which facilitates rapid real-time data storage and analysis. Elastic Security offers:

  • SIEM and security analytics to identify and counter threats in the cloud, regardless of scale
  • Endpoint security, which uses a single agent to streamline threat prevention, collection, detection, and response
  • Cloud security for organizations to evaluate cloud setup and safeguard their cloud-based workloads

Exabeam Fusion by Exabeam

Foster City, CA | 2013 | www.exabeam.com

Exabeam is a leading cybersecurity company that provides advanced threat detection, investigation, and response solutions. Exabeam Fusion offers:

  • Cutting-edge cloud-native SIEM, which combines rapid data ingestion, powerful analytics, and fast query performance
  • Unified product capabilities, including cloud-native data storage, behavioral analytics, and automation for streamlined workflows
  • Enhanced analyst efficiency through end-to-end workflow automation and improved threat detection, investigation, and response

QRadar by IBM Security

Cambridge, MA | 2015 | www.ibm.com

IBM Security is a renowned leader in the cybersecurity domain, offering a comprehensive range of solutions and services that safeguard organizations against evolving threats. IBM Security QRadar offers:

  • Network security visibility that provides a comprehensive network view with event log sources and AWS integrations
  • Detection, investigation, and analysis of behaviors and threats, all integrated with threat intelligence
  • High-fidelity alerts with magnitude scoring and machine learning analytics to identify anomalous user behavior

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Santa Clara, CA | 2005 | www.paloaltonetworks.com

Palo Alto Networks is a leading cybersecurity company that provides a comprehensive security platform. Cortex XDR offers:

  • Comprehensive endpoint protection, defending against advanced threats with a robust security stack, AI-driven analysis, and threat-blocking capabilities
  • Accurate threat detection, pinpointing evasive threats with patented behavioral analytics and cutting-edge machine learning
  • Fast investigation and response to incidents through an intuitive incident management system and root cause analysis

Singularity by SentinelOne

Mountain View, CA | 2013 | www.sentinelone.com

SentinelOne is a pioneering cybersecurity platform that defends organizations against evolving threats. The SentinelOne Singularity platform offers:

  • Comprehensive endpoint protection for prevention, detection, response, and hunting capabilities
  • Streamlined security for containers and virtual machines across diverse locations, ensuring agility, compliance, and protection
  • Elevated threat detection and response for identity-based surfaces

Splunk Enterprise Security by Splunk

San Francisco, CA | 2003 | www.splunk.com

Splunk is a leading data analytics platform, transforming raw data into actionable insights. With powerful analytics and machine learning capabilities, Splunk helps businesses gain valuable perspectives on operations, security, and customer interactions. Splunk Enterprise Security offers:

  • Advanced threat detection with 1,400+ out-of-the-box detection frameworks and an open, extensible data monitoring platform
  • Risk-based alerting architecture and integrated intelligence enrichment
  • Rapid and responsive security updates and flexible deployment options

XDR by Trend Micro

Shibuya City, Tokyo | 2005 | www.trendmicro.com

Trend Micro is a prominent cybersecurity company that provides comprehensive solutions to safeguard businesses and individuals against evolving digital threats. Trend Micro XDR offers:

  • Early, precise threat detection by integrating data for improved speed and accuracy, reducing false positives
  • Rapid threat investigation and response, with interactive graphs, MITRE ATT&CK® mapping, and centralized actions
  • Advanced threat correlation, connecting comprehensive activity data across security vectors and enhancing analytics and detection models.

Carbon Black by VMware

Palo Alto, CA | 1998 | www.vmware.com

VMware is a notable company specializing in virtualization and cloud computing solutions. VMware Carbon Black offers:

  • Modernized endpoint protection that enhances detection and prevention capabilities for comprehensive endpoint security
  • A simplified security stack that unifies endpoint and container security via a single agent and console, reducing downtime and optimizing resource usage
  • Enhanced environment confidence that provides a clear understanding of your environment and empowers confident decision-making in complex modern setups
  • Increased container visibility, enabling faster and more effective remediation by providing improved context into container processes

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]]> Best Tools to Augment or Replace Your SIEM Solution https://www.security-tools.com/best-siem-augmentation-or-replacement-tools/ Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:15:01 +0000 https://www.security-tools.com/?p=2550 Table of Contents Why you might augment or replace your SIEM What to look for in a SIEM augmentation or replacement Top solutions to augment or replace your SIEM A security information and event management (SIEM) solution is a cybersecurity and threat detection technology that collects, aggregates, and analyzes events — from servers, cloud infrastructure, […]

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A security information and event management (SIEM) solution is a cybersecurity and threat detection technology that collects, aggregates, and analyzes events — from servers, cloud infrastructure, and firewalls — to detect suspicious activity. It is an essential tool for security analysts, enabling proactive threat detection and response measures to counter data breaches and cyberattacks. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates the cost of cybercrime will hit $8 trillion in 2023 and grow to $10.5 trillion by 2025. As a result of escalating breaches, the SIEM market is growing. However, the traditional methods for threat detection must evolve to provide adequate protection against the volume and strength of modern attacks. As cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated, legacy SIEM solutions can no longer provide sufficient protection. In this post, we’ll consider why enterprises need more than SIEM for robust cybersecurity and discuss what they should look for when choosing a SIEM solution. Then, we’ll provide an overview of the best tools for augmenting or replacing your SIEM solution.

Why you might augment or replace your SIEM solution

Differentiating real, time-sensitive threats from noise and potential diversions can be an arduous task. That’s the hope of bad actors; after all, cyber assailants often use misdirection tactics to confuse security analysts. SIEM augmentation can leverage technologies — such as machine learning and advanced data analytics — to provide the following benefits:
  • Threat detection, enabling faster response times and threat mitigation through active activity monitoring and analysis
  • Threat intelligence, providing insights to understand attackers’ motives, targets, and behaviors
  • Task automation, reducing the burden on security analysts and allowing them to focus less on repetitive work units and more on strategic decisions
  • Discovery of elusive correlations between security events, equipping security analysts with a deeper understanding of ongoing breaches

What to look for in a SIEM augmentation or replacement

SIEM augmentation solutions provide various capabilities and features. When evaluating potential tools, consider your organization’s specific requirements. Common capabilities among solutions include:

Scalability and performance

  • Analyzes vast amounts of various data with minimal latency
  • Provides specific recommendations for ongoing threats
  • Scales while retaining accurate performance

Support for various data sources

  • Seamless data ingestion and normalization
  • Support for a wide variety of data formats coming from various third-party software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers
  • Continuous updates and upgrades to data parsers, supporting multi-cloud and on-premises infrastructures
  • Ability for organizations to “log everything” to eliminate blind spots while maintaining affordability

Comprehensive real-time visibility

  • Customizable dashboards that cut through the noise, enabling analysts to quickly and confidently decide which actions require immediate attention
  • Real-time data with minimal latency, facilitating instant threat detection
  • Configurable alerting that integrates seamlessly with third-party tools, yielding immediate notification and response

Cost-effectiveness

  • Provides high business value and strong customer support
  • Includes tiers for different use cases and organization sizes
  • Offers a pay-as-you-go model with no long-term commitments
  • Eliminates hidden costs by offering predictable licensing with minimal maintenance costs

Leverages user behavior analytics

  • Integrates with systems that use AI/machine learning (ML) to analyze activity for anomalous usage patterns
  • Uncovers hidden insights that contribute to more accurate predictions and diagnoses
  • Reduces reliance on human analysis and the probability of error
  • Works in conjunction with identity threat detection and response (ITDR) tools to uncover identity-based threats and potential insider attacks

Top solutions to augment or replace your SIEM

Today’s market offers a multitude of solutions for augmenting or replacing your SIEM. These options are designed for various use cases and organization sizes. Let’s examine the top-rated tools currently available.

CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale (CrowdStrike)

Austin, TX | 2011 | www.crowdstrike.com

CrowdStrike is a global leader in the cybersecurity space, providing cutting-edge solutions that cover all areas of cybersecurity, such as next-generation antivirus (NGAV), endpoint detection and response (EDR), and threat hunting. CrowdStrike offers an enterprise-level next-gen SIEM tool called CrowdStrike® Falcon LogScale™, which is notable for:

  • Enormous scaling possibilities, benchmarked to support ingestion of over one petabyte of data per day
  • Exceptionally fast search capabilities, which allow for scanning up to three billion records per second
  • An intuitive user interface with real-time, customizable, and easy-to-interpret dashboards for security monitoring and compliance

ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (CyberRes)

Santa Clara, CA | 1976 | www.microfocus.com/en-us/cyberres

CyberRes is a technology company owned by OpenText that focuses on cyber resilience. As part of its broad portfolio of tools, CyberRes provides a SIEM solution called ArcSight, which offers:

  • Seamless integration with existing security operations center (SOC) and security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) tools
  • Real-time correlation of data points, which enables constant updates of potential security threats
  • Instant alerting capabilities

Elastic Security (Elastic)

Mountain View, CA | 2012 | www.elastic.co

Elastic is a widely known software company that focuses on observability and monitoring tools. It is most famous for its ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana), which serves as the primary tool for log ingestion and analysis for many organizations. Elastic Security is a SIEM tool that provides:

  • Security analytics that help uncover hidden risks
  • Data normalization with the Elastic Common Schema (ECS)
  • Deployment options for various cloud and on-premises environments

Exabeam Fusion (Exabeam)

Foster City, CA | 2013 | www.exabeam.com

Exabeam is a rapidly growing cybersecurity startup that focuses on advancing security operations. Exabeam Fusion is a cloud-native SIEM solution that offers the following:

  • Advanced threat detection and response with Exabeam Smart Timelines
  • Rapid log ingestion and processing (over one million events per second)
  • An easy-to-use search feature that provides instant results

QRadar (IBM Security)

Cambridge, MA | 2015 | https://www.ibm.com/security

IBM is one of the oldest and most successful technology companies, known across the globe for its wide range of hardware and software solutions. It has been an active leader in cybersecurity for several decades. In recent years, IBM has successfully expanded into the cloud computing space. IBM Security QRadar is a security intelligence tool that offers:

  • 700+ supported integrations and partner extensions
  • AI-powered threat detection
  • Managed services for cloud migration support

LogRhythm SIEM (LogRhythm)

Boulder, CO | 2003 | logrhythm.com

LogRhythm is a technology company that specializes in security intelligence, log management, and the reduction of cyber and operational risk. LogRhythm SIEM provides the following features:

  • Built-in incident management tools that enable faster resolution times
  • A unified platform with prebuilt dashboards, alerts, and reports
  • Machine Data Intelligence (MDI) Fabric that enables advanced log parsing and analysis

Microsoft Sentinel (Microsoft)

Redmond, WA | 1975 | www.microsoft.com

Microsoft has been a household name in the tech industry for many decades. It produces various sorts of software, from operating systems to team collaboration platforms. Its SIEM tool, Microsoft Sentinel, offers:

  • Security data aggregation from various sources with data connectors
  • Dedicated playbooks to help automate and orchestrate threat responses
  • Out-of-the-box integration with other Microsoft tools, such as Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Defender

Unified Defense SIEM (Securonix)

Addison, TX | 2007 | www.securonix.com

Securonix is a cybersecurity company that provides innovative solutions for SIEM and user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA). Unified Defense SIEM is a Securonix software that offers:

  • The Bring Your Own Snowflake feature, which allows organizations to integrate their existing Snowflake Data Cloud Platform with Securonix analytics
  • Autonomous Threat Sweeper (ATS) that automatically and retroactively hunts for new and emerging threats
  • Cloud-native solution with flexible deployment options

Splunk Enterprise Security (Splunk)

San Francisco, CA | 2003 | www.splunk.com

Splunk is a software company that specializes in providing observability, data analysis, and cybersecurity services. At the time of this writing, Cisco is in the process of acquiring Splunk. Splunk Enterprise Security offers:

  • Risk-based alerting that enables analysts to define risk thresholds for alerts to avoid false positives and alert fatigue
  • Over 1,400 built-in threat detections for frameworks, such as MITRE ATT&CK®, NIST, CIS 20, and Kill Chain
  • Regular security content updates from the Splunk Threat Research Team

Cloud SIEM (Sumo Logic)

Redwood City, CA | 2010 | www.sumologic.com

Sumo Logic specializes in cloud observability, security, and analytics. It labels itself as a pioneer of continuous intelligence, enabling companies to address challenges and opportunities presented by digital transformation. Its security tool, Cloud SIEM, offers:

  • 24/7 enterprise customer support
  • Numerous API integrations that pull telemetry from sources such as Okta, Amazon GuardDuty, and Microsoft Office 365
  • Advanced correlation and detection of threats across hybrid, multi-cloud, and on-premises environments

Conclusion

Organizations everywhere have experienced a substantial uptick in the frequency, sophistication, and cost of cybersecurity attacks. SIEM tools are a necessity in the battle against cyberattacks. In this article, we reviewed the best modern SIEM solutions or tools to augment an enterprise’s current SIEM.

Choosing the right solution depends on the size and industry of your organization. Regardless of your use case, make sure to look for solutions that support your business needs — particularly in the areas of scalability, performance, machine learning capabilities, and cost-effectiveness.

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]]> Top 10 Cloud Monitoring Solutions https://www.security-tools.com/top-ten-cloud-monitoring-solutions/ Mon, 31 Jul 2023 19:32:53 +0000 https://www.security-tools.com/?p=2417 Table of contents What is cloud monitoring? Importance of cloud monitoring Cloud monitoring tool considerations Top cloud monitoring tools What is cloud monitoring? Cloud monitoring is an aspect of observability that analyzes the health of your distributed cloud-based applications and infrastructure. Cloud monitoring helps IT administrators and developers gain better insight into their cloud environment, […]

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What is cloud monitoring?

Cloud monitoring is an aspect of observability that analyzes the health of your distributed cloud-based applications and infrastructure. Cloud monitoring helps IT administrators and developers gain better insight into their cloud environment, improve security, and resolve issues before they impact the end-user experience.

Cloud monitoring solutions proactively measure CPU usage, memory usage, network traffic, and storage utilization to ascertain whether your cloud resources are functioning optimally and meeting service-level agreements (SLAs).

In this article, you’ll learn why cloud monitoring is a crucial way to track the performance and availability of your cloud-based infrastructure, read about what to look out for when choosing a solution, and find a guide to the top cloud monitoring tools on the market.

Why is cloud monitoring important?

Cloud monitoring helps track resource utilization and improve performance, allowing you to establish baseline benchmarks. For example, you can add extra CPU or memory capacity if your applications are running slowly or if you’re looking to scale. These adjustments can be based on ongoing needs or current priorities in your organization.

Choosing the best cloud monitoring solution

A cloud monitoring solution provides you with visibility into your overall system performance to help monitor metrics and optimize usage. It empowers you no matter which cloud environment you operate in (private, hybrid, or public cloud).

Where visibility is low, a monitoring solution gives you all the observability you need to optimize your business functions and scale. Additionally, cloud monitoring solutions can regularly monitor your systems to detect misconfigurations or threats that could result in cloud breaches and compliance violations.

That said, cloud service providers (such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud) are responsible to secure the infrastructure, while it’s the responsibility of the customer to make sure that monitoring and securing the data, and address misconfigurations. Additionally, cloud monitoring — is an essential part of cloud security best practices.

With all this in mind, here are some key considerations to help you make the right decision in adopting the best cloud monitoring solution.

Service offerings and scalability

  • Consistently monitors all your cloud-based apps, services, and infrastructure for misconfigurations and threats.
  • Scales up or down to meet business needs.

Security and reliability

  • Provides robust security measures to protect company data and applications (including implementing data encryption, establishing secure access controls, and conducting regular security audits and testing).
  • Enables you to comply with important regulations like PCI DSS and HIPAA.
  • Offers incident response and data recovery protocols in case of a breach.
  • Ensures strong and resilient infrastructure to reduce the likelihood of system downtime.

Cost and flexibility

  • Offers a flexible pricing model and maintenance fees that align with your company’s budget and requirements.
  • Provides a high degree of flexibility, allowing your organization to increase or decrease in size or capacity and to choose from a range of services and pricing options.

Top cloud monitoring solutions

In this section, you can find the leading cloud monitoring solutions available on the market today and examine their distinct value propositions.

AppDynammics by Cisco

San Francisco, CA | 1984 | www.cisco.com

Powered by Cisco, AppDynamics offers a suite of application performance management (APM) and analytics tools.

AppDynamics Cloud offers:

  • Visibility into the performance of business applications and infrastructure in the Cloud
  • Monitoring and analysis of application performance metrics and user experience in real time
  • The ability to leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security by CrowdStrike

Austin, TX | 2011 | www.crowdstrike.com

CrowdStrike is the only vendor that offers visibility, security monitoring and auto-remediation across on-prem, hybrid and cloud environments in a single platform, with a single agent, and single plane threat intelligence, and incident response services.

CrowdStrike Falcon Falcon Cloud Security offers:

  • Unified security, visibility and monitoring of the company’s entire infrastructure, real-time monitoring, identification of anomalies and threats, and auto-remediation.
  • Real-time alerting, without false alerts, minimizing alert fatigue
  • Dashboards and visualizations, including attack path to help remediate issues quickly, maximizing your app’s uptime

Infrastructure monitoring by Datadog

New York, NY | 2010 | www.datadoghq.com

Datadog is a rapidly expanding software as a service (SaaS) company that delivers a full range of infrastructure and application performance monitoring services to developers, business owners, and IT teams.

Datadog offers:

  • A cloud-based monitoring and analytics platform
  • Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation to provide comprehensive infrastructure and application performance monitoring services
  • Real-time visibility, easy-to-use dashboards, and integrations with various tools and platforms

Cloud monitoring by Dynatrace

Waltham, MA | 2005 | www.dynatrace.com

Dynatrace is a technology company that delivers a software intelligence platform incorporating AI and automation to provide advanced monitoring and analytics capabilities.

Dynatrace offers:

  • The ability to leverage AI and automation to provide real-time insights and automated analytics on enterprise applications, cloud services, and infrastructure performance
  • Detection and identification of issues across environments to provide actionable insights
  • Integration with different tools, such as notification platforms, CI/CD pipelines, and feature flag systems

Cloud monitoring by LogicMonitor

Santa Barbara, CA | 2007 | www.logicmonitor.com

LogicMonitor specializes in providing end-to-end visibility into organizational IT frameworks.

LogicMonitor offers:

  • A SaaS-based performance monitoring platform
  • Monitoring of servers, networks, storage devices, and cloud services
  • Automated alerts, dashboards, and reports to help organizations optimize performance, improve uptime, and reduce costs.

Infrastructure monitoring by Middleware

San Francisco, CA | 2022 | www.middleware.io

Middleware is a software company that specializes in developing middleware solutions for integrating, managing, and monitoring complex IT systems and applications.

Middleware offers:

  • Connection between disparate systems and applications — such as HR, customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications — to organize business processes and increase efficiency
  • Real-time insights into system performance, allowing for faster resolution and improved uptime.

Infrastructure monitoring by New Relic

San Francisco, CA | 2008 | www.newrelic.com

New Relic is a software company that provides real-time monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimization solutions for cloud and web applications.

New Relic offers:

  • A comprehensive suite of cloud-based application performance management services
  • Broad visibility and real-time insights into applications and services across different environments, such as web, mobile, and microservices

Sematext Cloud by Sematext

Brooklyn, NY | 2007 | www.sematext.com

Sematex provides comprehensive cloud-based solutions, empowering DevOps teams and site reliability engineers (SREs) with better visibility to improve application performance.

Sematext Cloud offers:

  • Full-stack observability for private, public, and hybrid cloud applications
  • Features such as metrics and log collection, alerting, and visualization to identify and troubleshoot issues in real time
  • Automatic monitoring and logging of new machines, containers, and databases as you scale

Observability by Sumo Logic

Redwood city, CA | 2010 | www.sumologic.com

Sumo Logic is a service that provides observability and analytics for SaaS platforms and cloud-native applications, providing insights to improve security and reliability.

Sumo Logic offers:

  • Monitoring, observability, and cloud security capabilities
  • Real-time insights into applications, infrastructure, and services
  • Seamless integration with major cloud providers and services

Zenoss Cloud by Zenoss

Austin, TX | 2005 | www.zenoss.com

Zenoss provides AI-driven monitoring of cloud-based applications and infrastructure, enabling teams to perform effective root cause analysis, troubleshoot quickly, cut costs, and optimize performance.

Zenoss Cloud offers:

  • Predictive analytics using AI and machine learning
  • Reports and dashboards to provide insight into your entire IT service’s health
  • Data transfers to other automated platforms to facilitate rapid response

Conclusion

Cloud monitoring solutions provide essential visibility into the performance, availability, and security of cloud-based infrastructure, applications, and services.

This article highlighted our top picks of 10 providers of cloud monitoring solutions and their value propositions. Each solution has its advantages and disadvantages, so choosing the right one depends on an organization’s specific needs and requirements. When choosing an option, we recommend you to pick a solution that gives you visibility and monitoring across your entire infrastructure (on-prem, hybrid and multi cloud environment) in a single unified platform with one console, to avoid silos between security tools. A solution that optimizes performance, improves customer experience, and helps you troubleshoot issues quickly across your organization.

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]]> Top 10 Log Management Tools https://www.security-tools.com/top-10-log-management-tools/ Tue, 31 Jan 2023 22:18:54 +0000 https://www.security-tools.com/?p=1225 Table of Contents What is Log Management? Why is Log Management Important? Considerations when selecting a Log Management Tool Top 10 Solutions Listing What is Log Management? Log management is the practice of continuously gathering, storing, processing, synthesizing and analyzing data from disparate programs and applications in order to optimize system performance, identify technical issues, […]

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What is Log Management?

Log management is the practice of continuously gathering, storing, processing, synthesizing and analyzing data from disparate programs and applications in order to optimize system performance, identify technical issues, better manage resources, strengthen security and improve compliance.

Log management tool generally offers the following functionalities:

    • Collection: A log management tool that aggregates data from the OS, applications, servers, users, endpoints or any other relevant source within the organization.
    • Monitoring: Log monitoring tools track events and activity, as well as when they occurred.
    • Analysis: Log analysis tools that review the log collection from the log server to proactively identify bugs, security threats or other issues.
    • Retention: A tool that designates how long log data should be retained within the log file.
    • Indexing or Search: A log management tool that helps the IT organization filter, sort, analyze or search data across all logs.
    • Reporting: Advanced tooling that automates reporting from the audit log as it relates to operational performance, resource allocation, security or regulatory compliance.

The Importance of Log Management

An effective log management system and strategy enables real-time insights into system health and operations. This is absolutely critical when it comes to cybersecurity, since data from endpoints, systems, and applications can often identify the first sign of a system compromise or attack.

An effective log management solution provides:

    • Unified data storage through centralized log aggregation
    • Improved security through a reduced attack surface, real-time monitoring and improved detection and response times
    • Improved observability and visibility across the enterprise through a common event log
    • Enhanced customer experience through log data analysis and predictive modeling
    • Faster and more precise troubleshooting capabilities through advanced network analytics

Considerations When Choosing a Log Management Tool

An explosion of data, as driven by the proliferation of connected devices, as well as the shift to the cloud, has increased the complexity of log management for many organizations. A modern, effective log management solution should address the common core challenges faced by most organizations.

Centralized Log Management

Centralized log management is the act of aggregating all log data in a single location and common format. Since data comes from a variety of sources, including the OS, applications, servers and hosts, all inputs must be consolidated and standardized before the organization can generate meaningful insights. Centralization simplifies the analysis process and increases the speed at which data can be applied throughout the business.

Data Standardization

Because log management draws data from many different applications, systems, tools and hosts, all data must be consolidated into a single system that follows the same format. This log file will help IT and information security professionals effectively analyze log data and produce insights used in order to carry out business critical services.

Volume and Scalability

Data is produced at an incredible rate. For many organizations the volume of data continuously generated by applications and systems requires a tremendous amount of effort to effectively gather, format, analyze and store. A log management system must be designed to manage the extreme amount of data and provide timely insights.

 Latency

Indexing within the log file can be a very computationally-expensive activity, causing latency between data entering a system and then being included in search results and visualizations. Latency can increase depending on how and if the log management system indexes data.

 IT Burden

When done manually, log management is incredibly time consuming and expensive. Digital log management tools help to automate some of these activities and alleviate the strain on IT professionals.

Falcon LogScale by CrowdStrike

Austin, TX | 2011 | www.crowdstrike.com

CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale is a centralized log management platform that allows organizations to make data-driven decisions about the performance, security and resiliency of their IT environment.

Key features:

    • Complete observability across distributed systems
    • Streaming ingestion at any scale, with a benchmark of more than one petabyte per day with live queries
    • Index-free architecture that enables data burst and high-speed search
    • Robust data compression rate and cloud-storage options to ingest and manage more data in log management processes
    • Flexible and scalable deployment for any configuration: on-premises, cloud or hybrid
    • Index-free instant search works with any structured or unstructured data format
    • Cloud-based bucket storage for all persistent data for virtually unlimited retention

Datadog

New York City, NY | 2010 | www.datadoghq.com

Datadog Log Management is a centralized log management solution that unifies logs, metrics, and traces in a single view via a centralized control panel.

Key features:

    • Ability to build complex datasets from raw log data across any tech stack
    • Automatically identifies trends in log activity and visualizes summary log data to enable rapid troubleshooting, investigation, and analytics
    • Out-of-the-box log processing pipelines for more than 170 common technologies
    • Supports rehydration from archives to assist in audits or investigations
    • Provides direct access to relevant logs in the event of a security alert
    • Granular controls to meet the specific needs and functions of the IT team
    • Scalable solution capable of handling millions of logs per minute or petabytes per month

Devo

Cambridge, MA | 2011 | www.devo.com

Devo is a centralized log management platform that enables real-time search and alerts.

Key features:

    • Offers full centralized log management functionality along with ITOps, application performance monitoring (APM), and security information and event management (SIEM) functionality
    • Leverages an ingestion component known as a Relay to eliminate the need for indexing during ingest, making data immediately searchable and enabling real-time alerts
    • Scalable solution that can ingest 2TB of data per day, lessening the burden on cloud infrastructure
    • Stores data in a raw format and never requires reindexing because of format or source changes
    • Offers an average 10:1 compression ratio of data ingested vs. storage size
    • Compatible with any deployment model – on-premises, cloud or hybrid

Elastic

Mountain View, CA | 2012 | www.elastic.co

Elastic is a centralized data platform powered by three search-based solutions that helps companies collect and analyze data to improve observability, manage risk and ensure compliance.

Key features:

    • Unified analysis across all logs, metrics, APM and uptime monitoring
    • Supports any type of data and is deployable in any environment: on-premises, cloud, or hybrid
    • Ability to integrate with XDR, SIEM, security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) and endpoint security tools to enhance security
    • Robust integrations offer the ability to connect data from across the organization and enable enterprise-wide search capabilities

Chronicle by Google

Mountain View, CA | 1998 | www.cloud.google.com

Part of Google’s cloud-native Security Operations Suite, Google Chronicle helps companies detect and respond to cyber threats with speed and at scale.

Key features:

    • Cloud-based, curated threat detection, investigation and response through advanced, comprehensive data collection, search and analysis
    • Augments the existing tech stack to enable stronger security operations
    • Ingests data into a private container at petabyte scale with 1-year retention
    • All data is aggregated, normalized, and linked with out-of-the-box detections and threat intelligence

Dynatrace by Grail

Waltham, MA | 2005 | www.dynatrace.com

Dynatrace is a centralized log management platform that provides observability, security, and business data in context with no indexes, rehydration, or sampling.

Key features:

    • Leverages unified log management and log analytics to provide instant access to petabytes of data without the need to reconstitute and reindex
    • Consolidates data into a single purpose-built data lakehouse to analyze log data in real time and context
    • Leverages AI to collect, parse, and monitor log data to identify trends proactively and resolve issues faster
    • Option to turn any log or metric into a dashboard without the need to rehydrate or reindex
    • More than 600 supported technologies, plus an open application programming interface (API) to support multi-cloud environments

Graylog

Houston, TX | 2009 | www.graylog.com

Graylog is a centralized log management solution for network monitoring that provides high-fidelity alerts and instant search to reduce investigation time.

Key features:

    • Intuitive UI and dashboard functionality enables users to build and configure scheduled reports as well as customized data displays
    • Option to combine multiple searches and export results to a single dashboard
    • Leverages ML to create and update a baseline of “normal” activity and identify anomalous behaviors
    • Integrates with SOAR and threat intelligence solutions to improve security posture and reduce risk

Mezmo

Mountain View, CA | 2005 | www.mezmo.com

Mezmo is a centralized data log management solution that gathers data from any source to enable real-time intelligence.

Key features:

    • 5 petabytes of data processed each month across 12 global data centers
    • Rule-based data routing offers the option to exclude data and specify retention timelines to minimize the data set and lower costs
    • Flexibility in how data is parsed and organized to ensure optimal actionability and affordability
    • Custom alerts based on defined queries, correlations and storage rules

Splunk

San Francisco, CA | 2003 | www.splunk.com

Splunk is a data platform that leverages advanced analytics to support real-time security visibility, improved threat detection, automated investigations and response.

Key features:

    • Full-stack, analytics-powered and OpenTelemetry-native observability solution
    • Offers a high level of integration and customizations, including more than 2,400 unique apps and add-ons and 1,000 unique data integrations
    • Ability to manage the entire security infrastructure from one platform
    • Integrates with security operations center (SOC) and SOAR tools to elevate security operations and enable data-driven security
    • Automates repetitive security tasks to shorten response time, increase analyst productivity and improve accuracy
    • Transforms and curates data to improve accessibility, actionality, efficiency and resiliency

Sumo Logic

Redwood City, CA | 2010 | www.sumologic.com

Sumo Logic is a cloud-native, centralized log analytics service that collects logs from almost any system in nearly any format.

Key features:

    • Analyzes more than 100 PB of data on average each day
    • Conducts real-time forensics on IT data through pre-built applications to identify anomalous behaviors
    • Offers hundreds of native integrations for out-of-the-box visibility into enterprise applications and infrastructures

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