Security information and event management (SIEM) software products and services combine security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM), and provide real-time analysis of security alerts generated by network hardware and applications.
SIEM is sold as software, appliances or managed services; these products are also used to log security data and generate reports for compliance purposes.
The acronyms SEM, SIM and SIEM have been sometimes used interchangeably. The segment of security management that deals with real-time monitoring, correlation of events, notifications and console views is commonly known as security event management (SEM). The second area provides long-term storage as well as analysis and reporting of log data, and is known as security information management (SIM). As with many meanings and definitions of capabilities, evolving requirements continually shape derivatives of SIEM product categories. The need for voice-centric visibility or vSIEM (voice security information and event management) is a recent example of this evolution.