As you know, security information and event management (SIEM) systems collect data from enterprise networks, applications, and logs from operating systems, databases, and other sources. Read more about why you need SIEM.
Dealing with critical incidents should be a top IT priority. Your organization should have a plan in place to resolve those issues once they’ve been detected. If you and your IT team are overwhelmed with the volume of events – you are not alone! How many incidents are normal? According to a recent report:
The average organization logs about 1,200 IT incidents per month, of which 5 will be critical. It is a challenge to wade through all the data generated by the events that lead to these incidents and prioritize dealing with them. 70% say a past critical incident has caused reputational damage to their organization, underlining the importance of timely detection and minimizing impact.
70% of those surveyed say a critical incident has caused reputational damage to their organization.
The mean cost to IT of a critical incident is $36,326, and the mean downstream cost to business is an additional $105,302. These two costs rise together, suggesting high cost to IT is a proxy for poor event and incident management, which has a knock-on effect on business operations.
80% say they could improve their mean time to detect incidents, which would lead to faster resolution times and decrease the impact on businesses.
The mean time to repair critical incidents is 5.81 hours, this reduces if there are fewer incidents to manage in the first place. On average, a further 7.23 hours are spent on root cause analysis, which is successful 65% of the time.
Dealing with the volume of events generated by IT monitoring tools is a challenge.
52% say they just about manage, 13% struggle, and 1% are overwhelmed. Those with event management processes that enable them to easily manage the volume of events have a faster mean time to detect incidents and fewer duplicate and repeat incidents.
Two-thirds of those surveyed admit that dealing with the volume of events generated is a problem. Dealing with incidents distracts IT, staff, from other activities; beyond the IT department incidents impact business productivity and the customer experience.
Our Recommendation?
Outsource. By outsourcing the management of your SIEM, you are allowing dedicated security professionals to monitor the events and incidents that your IT staff may not have the time or expertise to decipher. This will not only reduce your mean time to detect, resolve, and perform root cause analysis, but it will save your organization money, reputation, and more. Early detection will reduce the impact and cost of incidents on your IT department and your organization.
Related: What is Firewall Logging and Why Is It Important?