Monthly Blog Round-Up – August 2018

Here is my next monthly "Security Warrior" blog round-up of top 5 popular posts based on last

month’s visitor data  (excluding other monthly or annual round-ups):

1. “New SIEM Whitepaper on Use Cases In-Depth OUT!” (dated 2010 – much ancient!) presents a whitepaper on select SIEM use cases described in depth with rules and reports [using now-defunct SIEM product]; also see this SIEM use case in depth and this for a more current list of popular SIEM use cases. Finally, see our research on developing security monitoring use cases here – and that we updated for 2018. A lot more SIEM use case discussion is coming, here is a new post for 2018 SIEM use cases.
2. “Simple Log Review Checklist Released!” is often at the top of this list – this rapidly aging checklist is still a useful tool for many people. “On Free Log Management Tools” (also aged quite a bit by now) is a companion to the checklist (updated version)
3. “Why No Open Source SIEM, EVER?” contains some of my SIEM thinking from 2009 (oh, wow, ancient history!). Is it relevant now? You be the judge.  Succeeding with SIEM requires a lot of work, whether you paid for the software, or not. BTW, this post has an amazing “staying power” that is hard to explain – I suspect it has to do with people wanting “free stuff” and googling for “open source SIEM” … 
4. “Updated With Community Feedback SANS Top 7 Essential Log Reports DRAFT2” is about top log reports project of 2008-2013, I think these are still very useful in response to “what reports will give me the best insight from my logs?”
5. Again, my classic PCI DSS Log Review series is still very popular! The series of 18 posts cover a comprehensive log review approach (OK for PCI DSS 3+ even though it predates it), useful for building log review processes and procedures, whether regulatory or not. It is also described in more detail in our Log Management book and mentioned in our PCI book  – note that this series is even mentioned in some PCI Council materials.

In addition, I’d like to draw your attention to a few recent posts from my Gartner blog [which, BTW, now has more than 7X of the traffic of this blog]: 

Critical reference posts:

• Important: How to Impress / Annoy an Analyst During a Vendor Briefing? Best / Worst Tips Here!
• “Tell Us About Your Technology” and More Analyst Briefing Tips

Current research on SIEM:

• Next Research: SOC, SIEM, and Again Overall Detection and Response
• 2018 Popular SIEM Starter Use Cases

• What Is “SIEM+” Or “Can We Have A Cyber Defense Platform?”
• SIEM Alternatives? What Are They? Do They Exist?
• 2012 Redux: What Is Application Security Monitoring?

Current research on SOC:

• SOAR-native SOC, Can This Work?
• Can You Do a SIEM-less SOC?

• Hybrid SOC Scenarios
• Next Research: SOC, SIEM, and Again Overall Detection and Response

Miscellaneous fun posts:

• A Rant on Single Function Security Tools
• Does Vulnerability Assessment Even Matter?
• My GDPR-Inspired Rant: Privacy, WTF!!!
• “Do They Have AI?” or That Rant on AI in Security
• All My Research Published in 2017

(see all my published Gartner research here)
Also see my past monthly and annual “Top Popular Blog Posts” – 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017.

Disclaimer: most content at SecurityWarrior blog was written before I joined Gartner on August 1, 2011 and is solely my personal view at the time of writing. For my current security blogging, go here.

Other posts in this endless series:

• Monthly Blog Round-Up – July 2018
• All posts tagged monthly