Security information and event management software (SIEM) products have been an enduring part of enterprise software ever since the category was created back in 2005 by a couple of Gartner analysts. It is an umbrella term that defines a way to manage the deluge of event log data to help monitor an enterprise’s security posture and be an early warning of compromised or misbehaving applications. It grew out of a culture of log management tools that have been around for decades, reworked to focus on security situations. Modern SIEM products combine both on-premises and cloud log and access data along with using various API queries to help investigate security events and drive automated mitigation and incident response.
For CSOonline, I examined some of the issues for potential buyers of these tools and point out some of the major issues to differentiate them. This adds to a collection of other buyers guides of major security product categories: