What is the difference between SIEM and XDR?

The “X” in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) essentially implies more efficient threat detection and mitigation methods. Nevertheless, it’s a bit confusing that XDR sounds the same as SIEM in that various things are feed to a common collector.

Gartner, a reputable infosec analyst company describes Extended Detection and Response (XDR) as a SaaS-powered, vendor-specific cybersecurity threat identification and response tool. XDR is renowned for its integration of different security products into viscidness security systems unifying all licensed elements. Nevertheless, XDR is a relatively modern trend and a great number of cybersecurity providers and users fail to distinguish it from SIEM. The fundamental difference is that XDR is intrinsically integrated with various products, fundamentally from the same provider, which enables it to offer splendid threat detection and mitigation features. XDR allows businesses to go beyond ordinary detective measures by offering holistic and simpler detection of threats across the whole landscape. It also delivers timely information concerning the threats detected to enterprise operations to allow splendid and fast outcomes.

SIEM Tools

SIEM or Security information and event management is a collection of services and tools that offer holistic visibility of an enterprise’s information security. Also, it enables event log management allowing the consolidation of information from different sources. SIEM permits the correlation of incidents collected from various logs and security sources. Moreover, SIEM offers and automated security incident notifications; the majority of SIEM systems feature dashboards to offer alerts involving security matters and numerous ways of direct notification. Security information and event management and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) technologies have as many benefits and similarities as their differences. For instance, both solutions incorporate new analytic features, machine learning (ML), automation, as well as security orchestration to enable improved threat detection and mitigation. So, how are these two infosec solutions different? What are the fundamental variations between XDR and SIEM?

XDR Tools

Whereas XDR is centered on the identification, investigation, and mitigation of security incidents as effectively and fast as possible, SIEM basically does that while serving as a system that allows compliance inspection, reporting, as well as retention. To enable threat visibility and mitigation as well as compliance requirements, SIEM solutions exploit a vast amount of the organization’s data such as network, endpoint, and logs information. Conversely, XDR solutions aren’t designed to satisfy compliance requirements in the manner that SIEM solutions are, hence XDR solutions fundamentally don’t require gathering logs data to support threat detection and examination; rather, both endpoint and network information are adequate. In the event where the enterprise requires user logs to solve infosec issues, XDR solutions need far fewer of them as compared with SIEM solutions.

Stones are usually thrown at SIEM forgetting that SIEM is one of the best security solutions when handled rightfully. Pulling log information from hundreds to thousands of providers’ products, making it sensible and generating meaningful alerts is one powerful task. Nevertheless, SIEM is a bit shallow. It gathers from a wide variety of things but this data is limited. It cannot command a particular product class, for example, an endpoint protection platform (EPP) to hand over more data than the generic formats support. And where the EPP introduces some advanced proprietary inspection capabilities, SIEM is tremendously limited concerning how it can accommodate these new data feeds. Notwithstanding, SIEM is broadly used across various products and by many security vendors and continues to be a fundamental infosec solution.

Summary

In summary, XDR is usually differentiated aa system that provides built-in incident detection and response; contrasted with traditional SIEM solutions that only do Log management and correlation for threat detection without response capabilities. With the introduction of Next-Generation SIEM, the line between these two has become every time blurrier and more difficult to differentiate due to incident response capabilities included into SIEM products. A Next-gen SIEM and an XDR nowadays offer the same features and are usually the same product under the hood; however, they might be sold under different names for marketing purposes.