Cloud Security Platforms

What is SIEM & SOAR and their basic purpose?

Episode-1

A branch of Data-science and Machine Learning / Deep Machine Learning.

This Series of Cloud security and Extended Detection

and Response (EDR/XDR) is the era of new learning for understanding data and analytics on top of it for safe-guarding and securing an organization or a person from any upcoming or ongoing threat.

It would be considered how data-science works best for producing signals either in the favor or against you are your organization. In-case, of collecting data from various different location and then processing it into a meaningful information is done through a system which is call “Security Information Event Management”.  

What is SIEM and its Benefits

SIEM is essentially the nerve center of enterprise security operations. It empowers organizations with visibility, compliance, and faster incident response. However, it requires investment in both technology and skilled personnel to avoid pitfalls like alert fatigue and high operational costs.

Would you like me to also compare SIEM vs. SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response)? That’s often the next step organizations consider when scaling their security operations.

SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) is a cybersecurity solution that collects, aggregates, and analyzes log data from across an organization’s IT infrastructure (servers, applications, firewalls, endpoints, etc.). It provides real-time monitoring, threat detection, and incident response by centralizing security events into a single platform.

Benefits of SIEM

• Real-time threat detection – Identifies suspicious activity as it happens.
• Centralized log management – Consolidates logs from multiple sources for easier analysis.
• Improved incident response – Provides alerts and forensic data to accelerate investigations.
• Compliance support – Helps meet regulatory requirements (HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, etc.).
• Advanced analytics – Uses machine learning and correlation rules to detect complex attacks.
• Visibility across infrastructure – Offers a unified view of network, endpoint, and application activity.
• Reduced dwell time – Detects intrusions faster, minimizing damage.

What is SOAR?

Now, we need to act upon for safeguarding our environment

based on the information has been collected so in this case, the SOC teams are overwhelming based on number of events and to mitigate the situation. 

When we got a lot of common events happening and require acting upon as needed then we can save time if we do some common activities or complex activities be automatically done as soon as the issue raises or event happen. This automation of action or series of actions is done through a system which is known as "SOAR" [Security Orchestration, Automation and Response]!

It is a cybersecurity solution designed to automate, coordinate, and streamline incident response workflows. It integrates with SIEM, threat intelligence platforms, and security tools to reduce manual effort, handle repetitive tasks, and ensure faster, more consistent responses to security incidents. SOAR is especially valuable for security operations centers (SOCs) dealing with high alert volumes.

Feature	SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)	SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response)
Primary Role	Collects, aggregates, and analyzes logs/events for threat detection	Automates and orchestrates incident response workflows
Focus	Visibility, detection, compliance, centralized monitoring	Response, automation, playbooks, reducing manual workload
Data Handling	Aggregates logs from multiple sources	Uses SIEM alerts and external feeds to trigger automated actions
Output	Alerts, dashboards, compliance reports	Automated responses, tickets, workflows, escalations
Best Use Case	Detecting anomalies and suspicious activity	Responding to alerts quickly and consistently

What are the use-cases for SIEM

• Centralized log collection and monitoring across servers, endpoints, and firewalls.
• Detecting anomalies like brute-force attacks, privilege escalation, or malware activity.
• Compliance reporting for regulations (PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR).

What are the use-cases for SOAR

• Automating repetitive tasks (e.g., blocking IPs, disabling compromised accounts).
• Coordinating multi-tool responses (firewall, endpoint, SIEM, threat intel feeds).
• Running playbooks for phishing response, malware containment, or insider threat mitigation.
• Reducing alert fatigue by filtering and prioritizing SIEM alerts.

There are so many tools out there in the market but I will focus on some important and famous tools available and used by many big organizations across the globe. Those are 

1. Microsoft Sentinel (SIEM)
2. Cortex - XSOAR - PaloAlto Networks

Introduction to Microsoft Sentinel (SIEM)

Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native Security Information and Even
t Management (SIEM) solution built on Azure. It provides intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across enterprise environments, enabling proactive threat detection, investigation, and response. Unlike traditional SIEMs, Sentinel eliminates infrastructure overhead, scales elastically, and leverages AI to reduce noise and highlight actionable insights.

Integration with 3rd Party SOAR or with Defender XDR

Microsoft Sentinel integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Defender XDR to provide extended detection and response across endpoints, identities, email, and applications. It also supports third-party SOAR platforms, allowing organizations to automate incident response workflows, enrich alerts with external threat intelligence, and orchestrate actions across heterogeneous environments.

This integration ensures that Sentinel is not just a monitoring tool but a central hub for security operations, combining detection (SIEM) with automated response (SOAR/XDR).

Licensing and Extended Capability

Microsoft Sentinel uses a pay-as-you-go licensing model, based on the volume of data ingested into Log Analytics. Organizations can optimize costs with commitment tiers or capacity reservations. Extended capabilities include:

• AI-driven threat hunting
• Built-in compliance reporting
• Integration with Azure Monitor and Microsoft 365 security tools
• Scalable data ingestion from multi-cloud and on-prem sources

This flexible licensing makes Sentinel cost-efficient compared to legacy SIEMs, while still offering enterprise-grade scalability.

How Sentinel and Log Analytics Combined Work Together

At its core, Microsoft Sentinel is powered by Azure Log Analytics, which acts as the data lake for all ingested logs. Sentinel layers security intelligence, correlation rules, and machine learning on top of Log Analytics to transform raw log data into actionable security insights.

• Log Analytics → Collects and stores logs from diverse sources (Azure, AWS, on-prem, SaaS apps).
• Sentinel → Applies analytics, threat intelligence, and automation to detect and respond to threats.

This combination ensures that organizations have both scalable log management and advanced security analytics in a unified platform.

Summary:

Using data-science to analyze the logs and provide meaningful information that can be used to find out the exact or root cause for Issues / events and to find out ways to automate the mitigation of situation so it cannot be repeated. We need SIEM and SOAR like Microsoft Sentinel with Defender XDR or Microsoft Sentinel with Cortex XSOAR. 

In order to play with any kind of SIEM and SOAR there are some technical terms we need to deal with every time like 

• CVE
• CVSS
  
• CNA
• Campaign 
• Workbook
• Playbooks
• Actions
• Jobs
• Issues
• Adversaries 

We shall talk about all above one by one with key relationships of all points (mentioned) above and we shall discuss some Cyber-security frameworks like 

1. MITRE ATT&CK
2. NIST
3. NVD

Stay tuned and Happy Learning 😀