The Top 3 Benefits of SIEM as a Service vs. Purchasing Off-the-Shelf

In the past, MAXX SIEM’s focus was on-premise workloads, which was still the primary architecture until about six years ago. Later, when we revisited the architecture for an upgrade, we leveraged AWS’s scalability and advanced features to build SIEM “in the cloud for the cloud.” While we can still support on-premise workloads, MAXX SIEM now allows us to prioritize and contextualize alerts to quickly identify and catch threat actors, ultimately saving your healthcare organization valuable time.

While customers can purchase SIEM off-the-shelf, most cannot make the product do what they want it to do. Catching malicious actors before they can do damage is more than just purchasing a product; it’s about the right people and processes to run the system. Using the off-the-shelf method means the customer is solely in control of alerts, and without proper knowledge of a SIEM’s depth, it’s easy to get caught up in a sea of alerts, leaving your IT team overwhelmed and vulnerable. Modern MDR providers help by using SIEM as a detective control, carefully monitoring and prioritizing alerts. This prioritization allows small, overburdened IT teams to use their institutional knowledge to focus on higher-level projects while leaving the 24/7 threat monitoring to experts’ undivided attention. One of our main focuses is the MITRE ATT&CK framework. A close relative of the Cyber Kill Chain approach, this framework ensures that if we don’t catch a malicious actor at one entry point (which we likely will), we can detect them if they move on to the next system or execute a different technique to compromise the customer—essentially acting as a tripwire. If a malicious actor does get a toehold in a customer’s network, we can quickly identify this and take swift action.

Another significant benefit of using SIEM as a service rather than purchasing off-the-shelf is alert contextualization, which is vital in a time-critical scenario when seconds count. Rather than spending valuable time researching which IP address belongs to which user, for example, context saves valuable time, and that’s not something you can purchase off-the-shelf. Partnering with a modern MDR provider with a fully integrated SIEM enables small cybersecurity teams to be more effective by shortening time to action. Further, periodic systems scanning helps ensure technical vulnerabilities and misconfigurations are identified and quickly remedied, providing dynamic protection.

Time efficiency is a huge differentiator when considering purchasing SIEM off-the-shelf vs. as a service. SIEMs are complex and can take years to set up correctly. We understand that, especially for our customers in healthcare, patient care is their primary concern, and a byproduct of that objective is ensuring patient data is secure. SIEM, at its core, analyzes patterns, anomalies, and threat intelligence to prioritize alerts and reduce the signal-to-noise ratio, ultimately eliminating background noise and saving our customers time. MAXX SIEM enables our customers to get back to the business of treating patients, which is what they do best; we take on the burden of recruiting, training and retaining top cybersecurity talent.

Partnering with a modern MDR provider ensures the right people, processes, and technology are in place for an overall lower cost of ownership than if you tried to build a SIEM in-house. This partnership saves you money and ensures your service quality doesn’t dip due to the cybersecurity talent shortage and turnover.