SIEM vs. UEBA: 4 Critical Differences

A Security Information Event Management (SIEM) platform can collect and log data for real-time monitoring and analysis of correlated events. User Entity Behavior Analytics will use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms to detect anomalies in user behaviors, including providing coverage for routers, servers, and network endpoints.

The State of SIEM Security reveals that 84% of enterprises are getting great results in reducing security breaches and enhancing threat detection by using SIEM solutions. An IBM study reports that UEBA is effective in detecting insider threats; it may serve other strategic purposes as well like enhancing user data privacy and implementing zero trust security.

The debate between SIEM vs UEBA has been long standing and many organizations cannot decide which solution to pick for complete threat protection. The truth is, you need both. And we’re here to give you the lowdown about these two. So let’s dive in.

What is SIEM?

A SIEM tool consolidates all your security-related information to give a holistic view of your IT environment. SIEM tools maintain log repositories and aggregate data from multiple different sources into one centralized platform.

Getting an SIEM will let you detect abnormal behaviors in security events and replace many threat detection processes. You may find some of these processes to be formerly executed with manual AI programming responses.

What are the key features of SIEM?

The key features of SIEM are:

• SIEM sifts through large volumes of security data and provides crucial insights about historical and real-time threats. It reduces the number of false positives and investigates the root causes of attacks.
• Modern SIEM solutions are capable of analyzing and correlating security data from multiple sources. This includes on-premises log data, cloud services, identity management security controls, databases, network endpoints, flows, and others.
• Log retention settings are a must-have feature in new SIEM solutions. They enable individuals to define specific periods for retaining logs by type, and source and can help free up valuable storage space.
• Your SIEM should understand context and intent. Look for a solution that offers key features like – free threat intelligence integration, dynamic peer grouping, asset ownership tracking, service account identification, and the ability to associate badging station log activity with user accounts and timelines.
• You can enhance security information modeling and get a single pane of glass view for your entire cloud estate. An SIEM tool will let you make complex queries, reduce the signal-to-noise ratio, and regain domain control.
• SIEM vendors are known to provide TDIR workflow automation capabilities these days. They usually provide response playbooks and enable threat response automation.

What is UEBA?

User and Entity Behavior Analytics detect changes in user behaviors and irregularities in regular usage patterns on corporate networks. For example, if a particular user downloads 50 MB of files daily and stops downloading suddenly or downloads 100 GB for no reason, the UEBA tool would immediately detect it as an anomaly and flag it. UEBA would alert system administrators and automatically take systems offline or disconnect the user from the network.

Some UEBA solutions operate radio silent; they’ll collect user behavioral data in the background for further analysis. Their algorithms are responsible for setting baselines for what’s considered normal behavior. The cost of investing in such dedicated UEBA tools is nominal. It will be based on the amount of user data analyzed. You don’t require any special licenses to acquire them.

What are the key features of UEBA?

The key features of UEBA are:

• A UEBA tool scans and detects insider threats, especially unknown threats. Modern UEBA can adapt to the dynamic nature of the cyber threat landscape. It is important to have the ability to track suspicious behaviors, and send security alerts, whenever issues arise.
• UEBA should be able to support your team with actionable threat intelligence. Organizations look for ways to reduce workloads and improve enterprise productivity with UEBA tools.
• Good UEBA focuses on incident response and risk mitigation as well. It can assist with post-incident investigations and provide detailed insights into behavior patterns that lead to security incidents.
• UEBA will assign a risk score for network behaviors that deviate from the established baselines which it also creates.

Critical Differences Between SIEM and UEBA

A key distinction between SIEM vs UEBA is that SIEM identifies potential threats; it mitigates them by analyzing security event data. UEBA looks at user data, activities, and signs of other anomalies; it will even consider any user interactions associated with them. SIEM can supercharge your business by solving compliance issues. You can prevent lawsuits and potential legal implications by simply investing in them.

Here is a list of the critical differences between SIEM vs UEBA:

#1 SIEM vs UEBA: Security Event Analysis vs. Behavioral Data Analysis

UEBA will start off by assigning a specific risk score once it detects a new user behavior anomaly. It then lets security teams decide on the highest risks and deal with them first. UEBA monitors and records user activity data establishes baseline behaviors for normal users, and tracks privileged accounts across the organization.

SIEM collects and logs data from multiple different sources, including network devices, endpoints, databases, servers, and apps. By using SIEM’s real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities, you can match abnormal events with unusual patterns and quickly detect security breaches.

#2 SIEM vs UEBA: Centralized Log Management vs. Data Loss Prevention

UEBA prevents data loss by safeguarding sensitive and intellectual property information. It detects malicious insider threats and attacks coming from external sources. SIEM focuses on centralizing log management and using predefined rules to find and address critical security issues. It enables deeper forensic analysis by gathering logs from multiple sources, systems, and apps.

#3 SIEM vs UEBA: Integrations

SIEM integrates with security tools like firewalls, IDS/IPS, and antivirus software. UEBA integrates with SIEM solutions, threat intelligence platforms, and incident response systems. Their integrations provide organizations with comprehensive security management capabilities.

When integrating SIEM and UEBA, it is important to ensure data consistency and accuracy across all systems. Set clear roles, apply the best encryption policies, and implement access controls.

You should also provide training and education to security teams on the use cases and benefits of both SIEM and UEBA solutions.

SIEM vs UEBA: 4 Key Differences

Your UEBA is not just limited to monitoring your cloud accounts. You can it to track current user and entity activity data. UEBA can assess user and entity behaviors; you can analyze data from multiple sources such as network access solutions, network equipment, firewalls, VPNs, routers, and IAMs.

Get ready to identify several failed authentication attempts within short timeframes and instantly notify your teammates about malicious behaviors in the workplace.

For example, you can find abnormal download and upload patterns and document low-level alerts instantly. On the other hand, if you are using SIEM, you can rest assured that your confidence levels will rise regarding your overall security posture. SIEM continues to play a critical role in threat handling and post-incident forensics.

Since we’re dealing with rising data volumes, we recommend using both SIEM and UEBA solutions for the best results.

Here is a table that lists the key differences between SIEM vs UEBA:

When to Choose Between SIEM and UEBA?

SIEM solutions are great for organizations that need limited cyber security telemetry. UEBA complements SIEM and is ideal for learning more about how your users interact with sensitive assets. Combine both SIEM and UEBA to achieve rapid incident detection and threat response capabilities.

A large number of attack surfaces are expanding; businesses struggle to keep up with the emerging threat landscape. Most enterprises face cyber security skills gaps and security staffing shortages. UEBA is a great choice when you have too many users and entities to monitor in cloud environments. SIEM is a better fit if the only concern is maintaining compliance and analyzing a large number of log sources.

The choice between SIEM vs UEBA will also depend on your organization’s budget. It will be influenced by your business requirements which may vary depending on the size of your organization.

SIEM vs UEBA Use Cases

SIEM lays the foundation for your cyber security when used right. Although SIEM tools are primarily used for analyzing and correlating security logs, they are much more than that. You use SIEM to respond to various threats, track suspicious activities, and improve operational performance. There are different SIEM use cases that organizations need to be aware of which we list below:

1. Improve Compliance and Track System Changes

SIEM detects compromised user credentials and analyzes security event log data. It tracks system changes and sets appropriate rules for flagging critical events. You can prevent further security risks and meet new compliance requirements at the same time.

2. Secure Cloud-based Apps

SIEM secures cloud-based applications, improves user monitoring, and enhances access control implementation. Prepare for possible malware infections, data breaches, and other types of security threats. SIEM tools will let you extend compliance monitoring and threat detection to cloud-based log sources like Office365, SalesForce, AWS, etc.

3. Safeguard Against Phishing and Social Engineering

SIEM tracks email links, online communications, and ensures the protection of different data types across the entire organization. You will find it easy to monitor loads, response times, and uptime rates across various servers and services. SIEM sifts through your log data to look for specific keywords, search queries and detects malicious intent. It simplifies compliance management and ensures continuous adherence to the latest standards like HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, and many others.

You can strengthen the cyber security posture of your organization by using UEBA in the following ways:

• Detect Suspicious User Accounts

Standard users follow certain navigation flows and user onboarding paths. Your IT team can sketch out these behaviors and classify actions that deviate from these standard courses. By using UEBA, you will be able to assign risk scores, draw baselines, and compare them. If a user account falls into the hands of a hacker, you’ll notice abnormal traits. For example, it may start accessing data it is not normally allowed access to.

• Track Movements of Cyber Entities

UEBA can help you monitor and track the movements of suspicious user-like entities. Cyber attacks are known to stay hidden, move laterally, and escalate privileges once they gain access to them. Since these entities don’t exhibit typical signs of account ownership, it’s difficult to manually detect them. UEBA can create standards, monitor their movements, and alert security units whenever it detects suspicious behavior.

• Create Investigation Timelines

UEBA accelerates security investigations by creating timelines and provides them with relevant and actionable insights into user and entity behaviors. It maps out user interactions, and relationships, and creates timelines for them too. It further adds contextual information like attack motivation, risk scores, and highlights the impact of each anomalous behavior.

Consolidating UEBA & SIEM for Better Cybersecurity

You can use SentinelOne to radically improve your cyber security posture by consolidating UEBA and SIEM features. Singularity™ Data Lake will centralize and transform your data into actionable intelligence for real-time investigation and response with an AI-driven, unified Data Lake. You can ingest data from any first or third-party source using pre-built connectors and automatically normalize using OCSF standards.

SentinelOne links disparate, siloed datasets to gain visibility into threats, anomalies, and behaviors across the entire enterprise. Leverage its full-stack log analytics to keep your critical data ready and secure at all times. Use the platform’s customizable workloads to preempt issues and resolve alerts quickly, and automatically.

Boost mean-time-to-response and remove threats completely with full event and log context. You can automate responses with built-in alert correlation and custom STAR Rules. Get rid of duplicate data by augmenting your SIEM. SentinelOne will help you harden your perimeter and defend against the threats of tomorrow by studying your historical data.

Book a free demo with the team to explore more of SentinelOne’s UEBA vs SIEM security features.

Conclusion

Selecting between UEBA vs SIEM can be a slippery slope because both are needed to achieve holistic cloud and cyber security. SIEM targets your networks, UEBA focuses on your users. The main difference between them is that one focuses on identifying threats based on behavioral anomalies, while the other collects and analyzes security event data from different sources.

Cybersecurity attacks will continue to become more sophisticated and SIEM can serve as the foundation to security monitoring. You’ll want to add UEBA to your security stack to get an additional layer of security. Together, they can keep your business protected, respond to incidents faster, protect users, and predict attacks beforehand.

SIEM vs UEBA FAQs

1. Can SIEM replace UEBA or vice versa?

It is crucial to recognize that not all UEBA solutions are equal. UEBA capabilities are built into SIEM solutions by default and in some cases, SIEM tools are augmented with UEBA features later on. UEBA can complete SIEM but it cannot fully replace it.

2. How Are UEBA & SIEM Different?

UEBA and SIEM are different in their approaches to threat detection and response. SIEM focuses on network traffic, logs, and system events while UEBA caters to analyzing entity behaviors and users. SIEM uses rule-based systems to look for anomalies while UEBA uses AI-powered algorithms to identify anomalies and potential threats.

3. Are all anomalies detectable by UEBA systems?

No, not all anomalies can be detected by UEBA systems. The reason is UEBA systems provide limited coverage. They are restricted to monitoring users and entities and cannot give visibility into all of an organization’s activities. You may also get false positives sometimes when tracking user behaviors. Some UEBA systems lack the contextual understanding that needs to be supported by human insight. Even when you recognize patterns and anomalies in user behaviors, they are not immediately apparent to systems.

4. What is the difference between UEBA and EDR?

UEBA can detect and prevent insider threats by examining user behaviors. EDR is focused on detecting and responding to threats found on endpoint devices. They both play different roles in organizations and can greatly enhance their cyber security posture.

5. What is the difference between UEBA vs SIEM vs SOAR?

SIEM, UEBA, and SOAR are all distinct cyber security solutions used by organizations for automated threat detection and remediation. SIEM focuses on collecting, analyzing, and correlating security logs, UEBA on user behavior analytics, and SOAR automates incident response workflows.