Under such circumstances, in-house security teams are looking for any information security suites that can get rid of cyber threats and attacks, ideally with an eye on being able to “try before you buy” in case the service doesn’t do what it needs to for your company. In this article, we will examine some popular enterprise tools with free home trials to see which products might be most effective against data breaches.
1. AlienVault OSSIM
AlienVault OSSIM, or Open Source Security Information Management, is an information security tool that enables cybersecurity folks to find, monitor, record and analyze cybersecurity events or incidents within a real-time environment and store data at a central place. Effective SIEM solutions like an OSSIM need to support logs interpretation, profiling, security alerts, data aggregation, advanced analytics, forensics, dashboards and Threat Intelligence Feeds (TIF). AlienVault OSSIM helps security teams in achieving essential security goals such as:
Intrusion detection Vulnerability assessment Asset discovery Behavioral monitoring
OSSIM also leverages AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTE) that allows government agencies, private organizations and independent security professionals to share and openly collaborate on the latest information about attack methods, emerging threats, and cybercriminals. Doing so enables enterprises to share threat intelligence feeds with one another. In other words, by using threat intelligence feeds, enterprises can share their cyber threat experience with one another. On the downside, some users have said that the reports generated by AlienVault OSSIM are clunky and a bit tedious to parse through. Moreover, identifying true positives is very difficult due to so much noise.
2. Burp Suite
Burp Suite is a web vulnerability scanner or penetration testing tool that facilitates auto-scanning and integration. This allows security professionals to integrate other security tools along with Burp Suite so that they can handle all tools at a single interface. Burp Suite restricts sensitive data through a Role-based Access Control (RBAC) and allows smart prioritization, saving you time during threat detection. The Burp Suite enterprise edition offers a free 60-day home trial. According to Glenn Jones, Systems and Security Architect at Mathematica policy Research, “Burp Suite is fairly quick to perform an attack on a website. I have found it very thorough for the time it takes to run an attack.” However, some experts and reviewers believe that Burp Suite is inappropriate for those who aren’t fully committed to their objectives or work, as the product is both expensive ($399.00/year/user) and difficult to learn.
3. Splunk Enterprise Security
Splunk Enterprise Security is an analytics-driven SIEM tool that helps enterprises drop their data breaches significantly through actionable intelligence. Detecting threats with as minimum time as possible is necessary. To this end, Splunk Enterprise Security ingests any machine data from on-premises or cloud for full visibility to promptly detect cyber threats in the IT environment. Sam Osborn, software engineer at Tableau Software, said, “it has reduced the time to resolution, time to investigate, and time to troubleshoot for debugging issues.” He further adds that out-of-the-box Splunk seems very powerful. In addition, this security solution also enables streamlining investigations whereby security professionals or forensics analysts can investigate activities around a potential security incident within one centralized view. The automated actions and workflows enable this tool to respond quickly and appropriately. Other essential features include:
Event sequencing Alert management Risk scores Customizable dashboards and visualizations
Splunk Enterprise Security is available for a free 60-day home trial.
4. Nagios
Nagios is one of the most powerful free security tools for IT professionals and small businesses. Nagios can monitor systems, hosts and networks and deliver alerts in a real-time environment. The false-positive ratio is minimum. According to Ricardo Melo, Network Analyst at Aloo Telecom, his company is using Nagios to monitor applications and computer resource conditions. Nagios alerts Melo’s admins or administration groups by email when there is any unusual event. Using this tool, organizations can identify and resolve problems related to IT infrastructure. This procedure is done quickly to prevent small problems from becoming a really big nightmare. Nagios can also monitor network services that include SNMP, SMTP, POP3, ICMP, NNTP and HTTP. This tool is also available for free home trial.
5. Demisto SOAR Solution
With the increased problem of the cyber skills gap, companies are looking for automated security tools to allow more to be accomplished even when there aren’t enough staff members available for the task. Moreover, most enterprises have a Security Operation Center (SOC) that incorporate dozens of different security tools such as antivirus IPS, IDS, firewall and so forth. Each of them can raise alerts if any suspicious activity is detected. However, it is not necessarily true that all these alerts, which can be in millions, are true positives. Many of them are inevitably going to be pesky false positives, which are not only annoying but also resource-draining. More importantly, enterprises today are also looking for tools that help them to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. Threat hunting capabilities allow enterprises to proactively pursue threats rather than waiting for their occurrence and respond thereafter. Demisto Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) solution is equipped with all the essential features that enterprises need today. It offers automation, orchestration and incident response and management capabilities. Threat hunting is also a use case of security orchestration. Demisto SOAR also facilitates an interactive investigation. Many security experts have noted that Demisto has impressive response capabilities. However, it is expensive. The Demisto free edition is available for a 30-day enterprise trial.
Conclusion
Clearly, there is no ideal solution for every company. Factors like company size, budget, staff size and capabilities of the security staff are all factors in considering the enterprise tool that best fits your business. When looking at potential software packages, it’s important to not only look at informed reviews and the pros and cons of each product, but also take an honest internal evaluation of what your true needs are as a company. Think about what level of coverage, balanced against price and complexity, you can realistically use. Whatever product you choose, we hope you have found these suggestions helpful in your decision-making process.
Sources
AlienVault OSSIM: The world’s most widely used open source SIEM, AT&T Business Start your Free Burp Suite Enterprise Edition trial, PortSwigger Splunk® Enterprise Security, Splunk The Nagios IT Management Software Suite, Nagios Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR), Demisto AlienVault OSSIM Reviews, TrustRadius Burp Suite Reviews, TrustRadius Burp Suite, Capterra Splunk Review, IT Central Station Nagios Core Reviews, TrustRadius
