Security Monitoring

Security Monitoring is the continuous process of collecting, analyzing, and responding to security-related data across an organization’s IT environment. It provides visibility into threats and enables faster detection and response.

Why It Matters

Cyber threats are constant. Without monitoring, intrusions may go undetected for weeks or months. Monitoring ensures threats are identified early before damage escalates.

Core Components

• Log Collection: Gathering events from servers, endpoints, firewalls, and applications.
• Correlation & Detection: Identifying suspicious patterns (e.g., brute force login attempts).
• Alerting: Notifying analysts of critical anomalies in real time.
• Response: Triggering containment and remediation actions.

Example Use Case

Imagine a brute-force attack against a company’s web server:

1. Logs show hundreds of failed login attempts in seconds.
2. The SIEM correlates these events and raises a high-priority alert.
3. A SOC analyst investigates and confirms the attack.
4. The analyst blocks the attacker’s IP and resets affected accounts.

Monitoring Workflow Diagram

Common Tools

• SIEM: Splunk, ELK Stack, QRadar
• Endpoint Detection: CrowdStrike, SentinelOne
• Network Monitoring: Zeek, Suricata

Best Practices

• Enable logging on all critical systems
• Centralize logs in a SIEM for correlation
• Define detection rules for common attack techniques
• Regularly tune alerts to minimize false positives
• Integrate monitoring with incident response plans