Policy Polly: The Rule Refiner
SIEM
In last week’s kickoff to our Characters of the SOC series, we introduced Dashboard Dale, the data-driven defender dedicated to uncovering insights that keep the SOC informed. Dale relies on well-crafted policies and detection rules, and that’s where Policy Polly comes in. She’s the SOC’s rule refiner, ensuring that the alerts reaching her team are relevant and timely.
Meet Policy Polly
Polly is the meticulous mastermind behind the SOC’s detection rules and alert logic. For her, every security alert is a chance to tune and optimize—she’s focused on making sure the SOC’s defenses catch all significant threats while keeping the noise to a minimum. Her efforts are crucial for reducing false positives, maintaining efficient threat detection, and enabling her SOC colleagues to focus on the most critical incidents.
Key Challenge: Balancing Precision with Agility
Polly’s main challenge is finding the perfect balance between precision—capturing true threats accurately—and agility, adapting SOC rules and policies to respond to evolving tactics. She faces several key issues:
- Keeping policies up-to-date with the latest threat intelligence, ensuring they reflect new attack methods and vulnerabilities.
- Managing data from multiple sources, from endpoint logs to network traffic, without creating redundant or overwhelming alerts.
- Reducing alert noise so her team isn’t bogged down by false positives, allowing them to focus on what truly matters.
The constant need to fine-tune and manage policies while facing a steady stream of incoming data can be overwhelming, but with Securonix’s advanced features, Polly is empowered to create a finely tuned, low-noise, high-impact SOC.
Solution: Securonix’s Policy Ecosystem
Securonix equips Polly with a suite of tools to help streamline her workflow, reduce alert fatigue, and maintain agile, adaptive policies. Here’s how Polly leverages Securonix to stay on top of threats without drowning in data.
Hundreds of Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) Policies
To support Policy Polly in her mission, Securonix offers hundreds of out-of-the-box (OOTB) policies, each designed to address the specific needs and use cases that SOCs typically encounter. The policies are meticulously crafted to cover a wide range of security events, including malware detection, insider threats, cloud security issues, privilege escalation, data exfiltration, and more.
Each OOTB policy includes predefined rules, parameters, and thresholds tailored to common attack vectors and detection scenarios. They enable SOC teams to have a fully functional detection system from day one, significantly reducing the need to build policies from scratch. For example:
- Anomaly Detection Policies: These policies use baseline behavior patterns to detect deviations, such as unusual login locations or atypical access times.
- Malware and Phishing Detection Policies: These policies are optimized to capture indicators of malware infections, ransomware activity, and phishing attempts based on behavior and threat intelligence.
- Data Exfiltration Policies: OOTB policies designed to flag large outbound data transfers or unauthorized file access, which are common signs of insider threats or external breaches.
The flexibility of Securonix’s policy framework allows Polly to customize these OOTB policies by adjusting thresholds, rule conditions, and even combining multiple policies for comprehensive detection. By leveraging pre-built policies as a foundation, Polly can apply her expertise to fine-tune them according to her SOC’s unique needs and threat environment.
Policy Optimization Tools
Securonix doesn’t just provide Polly with a large library of policies—it also offers tools to continuously optimize their performance. With features like policy simulation, alert trend analysis, and false positive management, Polly can ensure that her policies are running efficiently and effectively. Securonix’s platform allows her to test policy changes in a simulation environment before applying them, reducing the risk of alert overload or missed detections.
Extensive Connector Ecosystem
In today’s interconnected world, security data flows in from a multitude of sources—from cloud environments to endpoint devices, network systems, applications, and third-party tools. Securonix’s extensive ecosystem of connectors ensures that Polly has a seamless way to ingest and manage data from all these sources without having to compromise on compatibility or integration complexity.
Securonix supports over 500 connectors, covering a broad range of technologies and environments, including cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), endpoint protection tools (CrowdStrike, Symantec, Carbon Black), network security systems (Palo Alto, Cisco, Check Point), and identity providers (Okta, Azure AD). Each connector is designed to facilitate the seamless integration of data, allowing Polly to create unified, cross-environmental policies.
Key Connector Types
The Securonix connectors fall into several categories, each tailored to integrate a specific type of data source:
- Activity Import Connectors: These are optimized for high-throughput data ingestion and are ideal for pulling log files, activity records, and audit trails from sources like firewalls, IDS/IPS systems, and cloud services.
- API-Based Connectors: Connectors for applications and cloud services use secure APIs to access event logs, configuration changes, and user activity data from applications like Salesforce, Slack, and Office 365.
- Customizable Connectors: For organizations with unique or proprietary systems, Securonix offers customizable connectors, enabling Polly to design integrations tailored to non-standard data sources.
With these connectors, Polly can rest assured that her SOC’s security posture is informed by data from every corner of the enterprise. Each data source feeds directly into Securonix’s detection and analytics engine, allowing Polly to build policies based on a comprehensive, 360-degree view of the organization’s security landscape.
Advanced Features Supporting Polly’s Workflow
Beyond OOTB policies and connectors, Securonix offers additional features to help Polly stay at the top of her game.
Noise Canceling SIEM
Polly’s ultimate goal is to reduce noise and ensure her team’s focus is on genuine threats. With Securonix’s Noise Canceling SIEM, she gains access to powerful AI-driven filtering and correlation features that cut through alert fatigue by suppressing false positives. Noise Canceling SIEM dynamically filters out low-priority and redundant alerts, delivering only high-value incidents to Polly’s team. This means she can confidently optimize policies, knowing that Noise Canceling SIEM will handle unexpected alert spikes and keep her team’s focus on critical events.
Threat Intelligence and Securonix Threat Labs
With Threat Labs’ continuous feed of high-quality threat intelligence, Polly has access to insights into the latest attack methods, tools, and vulnerabilities. This intelligence directly informs her policy adjustments, keeping the SOC prepared to detect and counter the newest threats. Threat Labs’ continuous threat research enables Polly to proactively adapt her SOC’s defenses, so her team can stay one step ahead of attackers.
Autonomous Threat Sweeper (ATS)
Even with the best policies in place, Polly knows that some threats might slip through undetected. Securonix’s Autonomous Threat Sweeper (ATS) provides a solution, allowing her to retroactively search for new indicators of compromise (IOCs) across previously ingested data. If new intelligence emerges on a recent threat, Polly can set ATS to scan past activity, uncovering any signs of compromise that weren’t previously detectable. This retrospective threat hunting capability gives Polly peace of mind, knowing that her SOC won’t miss emerging threats simply because they weren’t recognized earlier.
How Securonix Empowers Policy Polly
With Securonix’s comprehensive suite of tools, Polly is able to balance precision and agility in her policy management. Here’s how:
- Efficient Policy Management: The vast library of OOTB policies and connectors enable Polly to detect a wide range of threats from day one, giving her a strong starting point.
- Reduced Noise: Noise Canceling SIEM helps Polly cut through alert fatigue, ensuring her team remains focused on meaningful threats.
- Enhanced Threat Detection: UEBA and ATS empower Polly to identify emerging threats and adapt to new behavioral patterns.
- Continuous Improvement: Threat Labs keeps Polly’s policies updated with the latest intelligence, and ATS allows her to look back through data to catch any missed indicators.
Conclusion
Thanks to Securonix’s extensive policy and connector ecosystem, Noise Canceling SIEM, and ATS, Policy Polly can effectively manage and optimize her SOC’s rules to detect true threats without overwhelming her team with noise. She can be confident that her policies are tuned, threats are being identified with precision, and her SOC is well-equipped to adapt to the evolving threat landscape.
Stay tuned as we continue the Characters of the SOC series, meeting more SOC personas and exploring how each one tackles their unique challenges with the help of Securonix.
Securonix 2024. All Rights Reserved Legal Center | Privacy Policy
