The Role of SIEM in Regulatory Compliance

Organizations of every size and in every industry must adhere to stringent compliance standards. Regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) demand rigorous data protection measures.

A solid Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform offers threat management and a thorough and centralized view of the company’s security posture. It also automates security processes and real-time threat detection and generates comprehensive audit reports—all of which help businesses maintain compliance and minimize security risks.

In this blog, we’ll explore how SIEM platforms help organizations meet various regulatory compliance requirements.

SIEM: Helping Businesses Avoid Penalties

Failure to comply with regulatory requirements can land companies in hot water with regulators, result in hefty financial penalties, and cause a loss of customer trust. A well-implemented SIEM solution not only helps businesses meet compliance standards but also lowers the chances of facing fines. Let’s look at the different regulations:

GDPR

For example, under GDPR, companies can be fined up to 20 million euros or 4% of their annual global turnover, whichever number is higher, for egregious violations. The GDPR insists on the strict protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), which includes general personal data like IP addresses and usernames, as well as sensitive data such as biometric or genetic data.

In 2022, Meta was slapped with a substantial 1.2-billion-euro fine for GDPR violations. The court found that the company repeatedly transferred EU user data to the US without maintaining the correct GDPR-level protections, and despite a 2020 ruling requiring ongoing safeguards.

This is why modern SIEM platforms are key, as they enforce compliance through rigorous verification and auditing of security controls, proper handling of user data, and enhanced visibility into log data. By having this structured access and reporting to data owners, businesses can lessen the chance of a breach and avoid these fines altogether.  SIEM platforms also provide detailed reporting that can demonstrate to regulators that the organization is taking security seriously and following best practices.

HIPAA

HIPAA mandates that healthcare entities and practitioners safeguard patients’ electronically stored protected health information (ePHI) by implementing appropriate administrative, physical, and technical measures to maintain confidentiality, integrity, and security.

HIPAA regulations relevant to SIEM include:

• Section 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(D) mandates procedures for regularly reviewing information system activity records like audit logs and security incident reports.
• Section 164.308(a)(5)(ii)(C) addresses the need for monitoring log-in attempts and reporting discrepancies.
• Section 164.312(b) requires the implementation of mechanisms to record and analyze activity in systems handling electronic protected health information (ePHI).
• Section 164.316(b)(2)(i) stipulates audit logging policies with a minimum retention period of six years as a technical requirement for users, applications, and systems.

In this way, any actions involving HIPAA-related policies or documents have to be logged, and these logs must be stored for at least six years from the last modification or reference date.

While this may seem doable initially, manually reviewing logging events across all the business’s systems and applications is not only an arduous task, it cannot hope to provide the same comprehensive insights that a SIEM solution brings to the table. Even if the IT team (who are usually overextended in any case) attempts to create hundreds of rules for event classification manually, they will quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer volume, which will lead to many false positives and limited actionable insights.

Falling foul of HIPAA can be an expensive exercise. The penalties include “civil monetary penalties ranging from $137 to $68,928 per violation, depending on the level of culpability.” There’s also a possibility of criminal penalties in the case of intentional violations, which can result in fines or even imprisonment.

However, achieving HIPAA compliance doesn’t have to be an arduous or time-consuming process. While system logs provide critical evidence of anomalies, they are often buried among millions of routine audit logs. SIEM solutions help centralize the collection, real-time analysis, and storage of these logs, making detecting and addressing advanced threats simpler.

PCI DSS

PCI DSS was developed to enable and enhance card owners data security. All companies that handle credit card and payment data must adhere to PCI DSS, particularly for monitoring and testing networks, as outlined in Requirements 10 and 11.5. Requirement 10 mandates comprehensive monitoring of all network access and cardholder data, stressing the importance of logs in detecting and mitigating data breaches.

In addition, requirement 10.6 specifies daily log reviews for anomalies, including those from security events, critical system components, and servers. Requirement 11.5 mandates implementing change detection mechanisms to pinpoint any unauthorized modifications to essential system files, with weekly critical file comparisons and alert responses.

SIEM systems help companies meet PCI DSS requirements by enabling continuous monitoring, log collection, and alert generation for suspicious activities. These tools also help monitor network connections, changes to firewall configurations, and traffic between internal and external networks—an element of PCI DSS perimeter security requirements.

Finally, SIEM improves user monitoring by tracking changes to user credentials and activities (which is important to combat insider threats), such as those that might occur with terminated or inactive accounts. It also supports endpoint security by gathering antivirus logs and managing potential vulnerabilities. SIEM also helps with auditing system-level changes and access to logs, sending out alerts in the event of unauthorized actions.

Failing to comply with PCI DSS standards can lead to fines of between $5,000 and $100,000 per month by payment providers, according to the PCI Compliance Guide. It can also lead to higher transaction fees and even the potential loss of the ability to process card payments. SIEM platforms help businesses avoid these consequences by maintaining the necessary levels of security controls and generating the reports needed for audits.

A Pivotal Role in Compliance

Considering all these points, it’s easy to see why SIEM platforms have an important role in helping firms meet compliance requirements. By providing real-time threat detection, automating compliance reporting, and generating detailed audit trails, these solutions help businesses avoid breaches. This will help your business reduce the risk of penalties and security risks.