How Wazuh is Revolutionizing XDR & SIEM in Cybersecurity Industry
In the Cybersecurity Industry we have heard about various tools for SIEM & XDR but in this article I will be covering a platform which i recently came across while researching. Due to Increasing cyberattacks each year, log monitoring and Endpoint detection is vital. Over time, cybercriminals have improved their techniques for evading basic security solutions. Therefore, businesses today require a strong security plan.
In 2022 itself, the global average data breach cost was $4.35 million. Moreover it is expected that this year $8 trillion worldwide loss will occour due to cyberattacks which has a direct relation to weak security infrastructure.
About — WAZUH
Introducing Wazuh, which is a Free & Open Source enterprise-ready security monitoring solution for threat detection, integrity monitoring, incident response, and regulatory compliance. Wazuh is also one of the fastest growing open source security solutions, with over 20 million+ downloads as of now.
The solution includes the Wazuh server, which is in charge of analyzing the data received from the agents, processing events through decoders and rules, and using threat intelligence to look for well-known IOCs (Indicators Of Compromise). Data from hundreds or thousands of agents can be analysed by a single Wazuh server. Wazuh indexer receives alerts it has generated, indexes them, and stores them. A strong user interface for data visualisation and analysis is provided by the distinctive interaction between Wazuh and it’s dashboard.
Wazuh provides a security solution capable of monitoring your infrastructure, detecting threats, intrusion attempts, system anomalies, poorly configured applications, and unauthorized user actions. It also provides a framework for incident response and compliance, all in one platform.
Installation
The Installation is pretty quick and simple. You just have to install and set up the Wazuh indexer, Wazuh Server & Dashboard. This documentation explains everything in step by step details.
The Wazuh Agent, which is a monitoring software can be deployed to laptops, desktops, servers, cloud instances, containers, or virtual machines. It provides visibility into the endpoint’s security and can be installed on multiple environments shown below. The Wazuh Dashboard helps in management and monitoring of the Wazuh platform. I will be covering more about Wazuh installation & Usage in an upcoming YouTube Video.
Features Offered By WAZUH
Wazuh has many valuable features including easy integration with other SOC tools, endpoint security monitoring, malware detection, inventory, detection of hidden processes, and cloud security. In addition, it can collect terabytes of data quickly, it’s open-source and free to use, and provides vulnerability assessment and scoring.
It also has a customizable log configuration dashboard and reporting, flexibility for cloud, syscheck, File integrity monitoring, integration with AWS cloud-native services, and support for PCI DSS compliance. Different operating systems and applications can be integrated with it including in depth log monitoring and analysis tools like ELK. Additionally, it comes with built-in frameworks for adhering to industry standards.
SIEM
Security information and event management or SIEM, is a solution that helps organizations detect, analyze, and respond to security threats before they harm business operations. SIEM technology gathers event log data from various sources, analyses it in real-time to spot activity that differs from the normal, and then takes the necessary action. Organizations can respond quickly to potential cyberattacks and satisfy compliance requirements through SIEM, which gives them visibility into network activity.
When it comes to Wazuh, The Wazuh rules assist in alerting you of application or system errors, misconfigurations, attempted and/or successful malicious activities, policy violations, as well as a number of other security and operational problems.
Wazuh offers in-built active response scripts, which the users can enable voluntarily by their choice as per the suitability of active response actions for their specific environment, which can be used to take a variety of defensive actions against current threats, like denying access to a system from the threat source when specific conditions are met.
Wazuh can be used to identify indicators of compromise (IOCS), run commands or system queries remotely, as well as assist with other incident response or live forensics tasks.
For threats that are currently active, Wazuh’s incident response feature is extremely useful. Active responses can be enabled voluntarily by the user’s choice. When a threat is present, the system starts taking precautions right away. For instance, many hackers employ brute-force attacks to try and guess username and password combinations. Wazuh will keep track of each unsuccessful attempt at authentication.
After a certain number of failures, the system will identify this as a BruteForce Attack attempt, and it will prevent future attempts from coming from that IP address. Wazuh can therefore detect brute-force attacks as well as stop them. Users can also use it to execute remote commands and run system queries. Additionally, they have the ability to locate indicators of compromise (IOCs) remotely, enabling incident response and live forensics operations from outside parties. This creates more opportunities to collaborate with experts who can protect corporate data.
The Wazuh SIEM provides —
- A view of potential threats
- Real-time threat identification and response
- Advanced threat intelligence
- Regulatory compliance auditing and reporting
- Greater transparency monitoring users, applications, and devices
XDR
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is designed to simplify enterprise network security management. XDR solutions integrate security visibility across an organization’s entire infrastructure, including endpoints, cloud infrastructure, mobile devices, and more. It can help in simplifying security management and enforcement of consistent security policies across the enterprise.
The XDR solution has the context necessary to identify complex and distributed attacks because it collects data from across the enterprise. To identify trends and known threats, XDR systems can also use threat intelligence and data analytics on this aggregated data. Additionally, XDR solutions have the ability to react to threats automatically. This entails both taking preventative steps to stop malicious content from entering a system and working to stop an attack that has already begun on a compromised endpoint.
Wazuh not only collects network data and application logs, but it also securely sends them to a central manager for rule-based analysis and storage. This analysis of log data is based on over 3000 different rules that identify anything that has gone wrong, whether it is an outside force or user error. It’s frequently possible to detect unusual activity or threats by reviewing the logs and performance of significant systems. This is made possible by the fact that the XDR analyses both internal and external traffic, compares performance and log data to known threat profiles in order to identify emerging threat patterns like zero-day attack patterns.
Wazuh provides some of the necessary security controls to become compliant with industry standards and regulations. These features help organizations meet technical compliance requirements. Wazuh is widely used by payment processing companies and financial institutions to meet PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) requirements. Its web user interface provides reports and dashboards that can help with this and other regulations such as GDPR, NIST 800–53, GPG13, TSC SOC2, and HIP.
Because it can be integrated with a wide variety of open-source security tools, Wazuh’s approach to XDR is distinctive and Unique. This implies that businesses can modify the system to suit particular requirements without having to deal with intricate and pricey licence agreements. For instance, AlienVault, VirusTotal, and AbuseIPDB are used to identify the malicious IP addresses used in spamming, hacking attempts, and DDoS attacks, and URL is used to identify malicious URLs used in the distribution of malware. PDQ Deploy is used to install the software and patch on a workstation.
By integrating with tools like Suricata and OwlH, administrators can get active network intrusion detection and visualisation features. They get the same level of situational awareness from this as from other top XDR platforms. Based on information from the network and endpoints, the system can also execute automated threat response plans.
As for Endpoint Security, Wazuh provides capabilities for threat prevention, detection, and response. The Wazuh agents installed on endpoints can collect security data, report misconfigurations and security issues and monitor file system and report changes.
Wazuh offers endpoint monitoring and security visibility in addition to self-defense tools and automated responses to threats. The Wazuh solution can respond by taking countermeasures such as deleting malicious files, blocking malicious network connections, and more.
Wazuh Integrations
Wazuh can be integrated with other security platforms to collect and provide security data. Integrating Wazuh with other security platforms can help us extend its capabilities for threat detection, security orchestration, and incident response, which are valuable to the IT infrastructure of a company. These platforms include- VirusTotal, YARA, Slack, Owlh, Suricata. As for its cloud security, it can be integrated with popular cloud platforms like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.
Pricing
The Best Part is that Wazuh is an open-source solution and is completely is Free to use, with no licensing fees. If you are interested in Cloud based XDR protection service, Wazuh does have an affordable premium plan including a free trial. You can read more about it here- https://wazuh.com/cloud/
My Review of Wazuh !
Coming from the Offensive side of Cybersecurity Industry, I can realize how useful Wazuh can be for people into Blue teaming or the Defensive side of Security. Not only is Wazuh Free and open source, it is also a great product compared to others in the current market which offer SIEM and XDR services. What makes Wazuh stand out is the ease of deployment and extensive support from the community and forums due to large sale usage.
Wazuh is revolutionizing the XDR & SIEM Category of Cybersecurity Solutions and can be a really good choice if you are a Small, Medium or Large sized company or a professional offering such services.
Contact- Wazuh
[+] Email- https://wazuh.com/contact-us/
[+] Twitter- https://twitter.com/wazuh
[+] LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/wazuh
[+] GitHub- https://github.com/wazuh
[+] Slack- https://wazuh.com/community/join-us-on-slack/
