The rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape has made it imperative for businesses to implement effective security tools to protect their digital assets. However, choosing from various detection and response systems can be confusing. In this article, we’ll compare two popular options: XDR vs. SIEM. Let’s begin.

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Article Roadmap

• What Is XDR?
• What Is SIEM?
• Key Differences
• XDR or SIEM: What’s Better for You?
• Can XDR Replace SIEM?
• Questions To Ask
• Next Steps

What Is XDR?

Extended detection and response (XDR) is a comprehensive cybersecurity solution that offers advanced threat monitoring, detection and response modules with deep visibility and external integrations. It collects and analyzes security data from multiple sources and expands on the capabilities of other tools like endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems to accurately detect threats. You can think of it as an evolved version of EDR.

Capabilities

XDR protects against cyberattacks across networks and cross-domains, including endpoint and cloud storage, with capabilities such as:

• Advanced detection helps identify evasive and advanced threats like zero-day exploits, insider threats and advanced persistent threats by combining collected security data with endpoint telemetry.
• Forensic investigation offers analytics and forensics after an attack to determine the cause and extent of the infiltration. It uses machine-driven analytics and AI integration.
• Policy recommendation enables security teams to generate security policies with smart recommendations, query guidelines and several other response options.
• Response orchestration is a critical module that deals with your threat response system. XDR can integrate with other platforms to guide your response plan and prioritize risks based on their criticality.

What Is SIEM?

Security information and event management (SIEM) is a combination of security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM) modules that collects, aggregates and analyzes security data to identify suspicious events and alerts security teams. It collects data from sources like applications, endpoints, networks and servers throughout your IT landscape.

Capabilities

SIEM uses a centralized console to collect, aggregate and correlate data. Its top features of SIEM include:

• Data collection is the primary capability of SIEM solutions. Similar to XDR, it collects security event and log data from various sources and hosts across your IT infrastructure. You can configure your security systems to send data to SIEM for analysis and storage.
• Correlation and aggregation is the next step which consolidates data from various sources into a centralized console and normalizes it for analysis.
• Data analytics helps analyze the collected and aggregated data to identify suspicious incidents. It uses data analytics, AI, machine learning and other advanced tools to provide deep analysis.
• Alerting is responsible for generating and sending out alerts to security teams about suspicious activities. It also offers insightful reports for teams to better understand vulnerabilities and take action.
• Unlike XDR, SIEM tools have compliance management capabilities that help your organization comply with data security mandates like GDPR, PCI DSS and HIPAA.

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Key Differences

Both XDR and SIEM collect, aggregate and analyze event data and logs from various sources for threat analysis and detection. However, the similarities end at this point. There are distinct differences in how they collect and use data. SIEM is known as a proactive tool, whereas XDR functions in a reactive manner.

While SIEM primarily focuses on collecting, correlating and analyzing security data to identify suspicious events and generate alerts, XDR uses that data to detect threats and create remediation plans. Additionally, XDR informs security teams, prompting them to investigate and address the incident. Log management and alerting are the primary focuses of SIEM, whereas XDR is all about threat detection and response.

Another difference is the sources from which they collect information. SIEM gathers data from all devices in your environment, including endpoints, servers, firewalls and intrusion prevention systems. On the other hand, XDR can only collect data from devices within your organization’s network.

Though some vendors are integrating compliance management modules into their XDR systems, it’s still relatively uncommon for most systems to have such capabilities. But compliance remains one of the significant advantages of SIEM tools, which can integrate several log types to meet compliance regulations and provide audits to adhere to these rules.

Manage security compliance with SIEM tools. Source

When it comes to management complexities, XDR systems generally integrate more seamlessly with your existing security architecture. SIEM solutions may require a bit more effort for integration. You have to individually tune alerts and connect them to all data sources for optimum performance.

Last but not least is their threat response capabilities. SIEM systems primarily perform data analysis and generate alerts. Beyond this, they don’t provide comprehensive remediation modules. However, XDR extends the analysis to offer and coordinate threat response efforts.

XDR or SIEM: What’s Better for You?

The answer to which solution is better for you completely depends on your company’s cybersecurity requirements. These include your security budget, the capacity of your security team, the scale of your operations and other factors. For instance, if you require log management capabilities, SIEM would be a better option.

Having said that, in terms of visibility and orchestrated threat detection and response capabilities, XDR is a superior choice. Its ability to proactively hunt, detect and respond to threats makes it a next-gen security system that’s highly effective in safeguarding your organization.

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Can XDR Replace SIEM?

This is one of the most vital questions that often arises in this comparison. The short answer is no — XDR can’t and shouldn’t replace SIEM.

The long answer is that XDR and SIEM have different use cases. SIEM has several benefits other than threat detection and response, including log management, compliance management and other data analysis capabilities. While XDR has the capability to replace SIEM in threat-related modules, it simply can’t fill its shoes in non-threat-related processes.

Questions To Ask

You can ask these questions internally to better analyze and understand your company’s security requirements and make a well-informed decision about which software you need.

• What’s our cybersecurity budget?
• What kind of deployment are we looking for? On-premise or cloud-based?
• Do we need compliance management modules?
• What other cybersecurity solutions do we already have in place?
• How much sensitive information do we store in our company?
• How many employees do we have in our security teams?
• Can my existing solutions integrate with XDR or SIEM?
• What problems are we trying to address with the new tool?

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Next Steps

While many organizations go for XDR primarily for its effectiveness in threat detection and response, it’s important to note that it’s not the only security module your business requires. To have a comprehensive security solution and effective compliance management, you must implement both solutions integrated with each other.

If you need more information on selecting the right fit, check out our free comparison report on top SIEM leaders that lets you analyze each product based on features, pricing and other custom criteria.

So who’s the winner for you in the XDR vs. SIEM faceoff, and why? Do let us know in the comments below!