What is XSIAM?
XSIAM Definition
Extended security intelligence and automation management, or XSIAM, is a new approach to security operations that drives dramatically better security outcomes by closely integrating and automating the capabilities and processes of a modern security operations center (SOC).
XSIAM is designed to be the center of SOC activity, replacing SIEM and specialty products by unifying broad functionality into a holistic solution. XSIAM capabilities include data centralization, intelligent stitching, analytics-based detection, incident management, threat intelligence, automation, attack surface management, and more – all delivered within an intuitive, task-oriented user experience.
XSIAM maintains your security posture, building upon the proven threat detection and response capabilities of XDR. With a centralized data store and unified SOC functions, XSIAM provides a clear migration path away from traditional security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. Be sure to read our “What Is SIEM” article for more information on SIEM.
First introduced by Palo Alto Networks in 2022, XSIAM is a novel category that's designed to deliver the autonomous security platform of the future.
Why Do I Need XSIAM?
As adversaries automate attacks against infrastructures defended by poorly integrated security products, security operations teams are required to respond faster than ever. Meanwhile the ephemeral nature of container workloads and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) environments has challenged security teams to maintain their security posture from moment to moment.
A byproduct of this is the growth of managed services offerings to scalably deliver additional resources in defense of the organization, but even with this added expense, many organizations feel overwhelmed.
An important shift for defenders in respect to these challenges over the past decade has been the evolution of endpoint detection and response (EDR) and extended detection and response (XDR) solutions to provide improved threat detection and response capabilities through improved security analytics and visibility into environments.
While many organizations are benefiting from these capabilities today, many other organizations are still using a SIEM for centralizing log data and aggregating additional logs that are frequently used for security and compliance use cases. Unfortunately, SIEMs often depend on manual configuration of log ingest and detection rules, as well as triage and remediation of alerts.
XSIAM seeks to alleviate the reliance on manual processes by productizing these processes and integrating them to deliver near-real-time security operations outcomes.
How Does XSIAM Work?
XSIAM is unique in the way it operates, using intelligent automation to break from the analyst-driven model of today’s security products. The system continually collects deep telemetry, alerts and events from any source. It then automatically prepares and enriches the data, uniquely stitches it into security intelligence and immediately applies machine learning detection analytics.
Alerts are grouped to incidents, fully enriched with relevant context. Routine incidents are recognized, handled and closed. Dashboards bring together all relevant aspects of affected users, assets and infrastructure. Embedded automation and inline playbooks speed actions, self-learning over time. In every respect, XSIAM helps minimize analyst tasks so they need focus only on activities the system cannot perform itself.
Cortex XSIAM | The Platform for the Modern SOC
Cortex XSIAM helps the modern SOC evolve from a reactive and human-first approach – that cannot scale to keep up with ever-increasing threats—toward the vision of an AI-driven, autonomous SOC. XSIAM embeds automation and analytics wherever possible to reduce SOC costs and make SecOps processes self-sustainable.
Cortex XSIAM will transform SecOps by enabling organizations to:
- Build an intelligent data foundation while reducing costs.
Cortex XSIAM can natively ingest, normalize and integrate granular data across the security infrastructure at nearly half the list cost of legacy security products attempting to solve the problem.
- Proactively outpace threats.
Cortex XSIAM tightly integrates with your environment and provides automation to enable continuous discovery of exposures through native attack surface management and automated response to deliver autonomous security. - Respond in minutes rather than days.
By providing multiple layers of AI-driven analytics, Cortex XSIAM detects emerging threats across the entire security infrastructure, automates correlation of alerts and data into incidents, and leverages a self-learning recommendation engine to determine response nextsteps.
When we say autonomous, we mean it just works, and does so in real time.
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