HOUSTON — October 15, 2025 — Graylog, a provider of SIEM and threat detection solutions built to secure lean teams at scale, today announced its inclusion in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Security Information and Event Management. Graylog empowers security organizations to modernize their operations with greater speed, efficiency, and affordability.

Advancements Since Evaluation

Since the Gartner evaluation period, Graylog Security has released several key advancements, including new AI-powered features designed for task-specific use cases:

• Evaluating and prioritizing alerts and security events.
• Adding external and contextual data to logs.
• Presenting evidence to support analyst decision-making while maintaining human control over critical workflows.

Enhanced Incident Management and Threat Visibility

Graylog has significantly advanced its incident management capabilities by introducing:

• Adversary Threat Campaign Intelligence: Provides analysts with a comprehensive view of an attack, rather than individually scored alerts, enabling faster, more consistent responses.
• Automated Remediation Workflows: Workflows that can be fully or partially automated, boosting response speed and consistency.
• MITRE ATT&CK Mapping: Delivered through the platform’s Threat Coverage widget, offering clear visibility into threat detection coverage and helping analysts align investigations with industry-standard frameworks.

These and future enhancements reflect Graylog’s commitment to deliver high-impact tools that directly address the real challenges faced by today’s lean security teams.

Visit Graylog to learn more

From Conflict to Catalyst: The Strategic Value of Aligning Security and Compliance

Compliance is not security. It has never been.

Think of it this way: Security is the act of writing a novel—crafting the story, developing the characters, and building the world. It’s the daily work of implementing, enforcing, and monitoring the controls that protect your systems, data, and users.

Compliance, on the other hand, is the spellcheck. It’s the essential process of reviewing that work to ensure it’s coherent, follows the rules of grammar, and functions as intended.

While spellcheck is crucial for producing a polished manuscript, it cannot write the story for you. Similarly, while compliance is a vital component of a strong security posture, it cannot protect your organization on its own. Security implements the technical controls; compliance provides business-level insight into their effectiveness. Security protects the data; compliance offers the external assurance that builds customer trust.

By dissecting the roles of compliance and security, organizations can move beyond the checklist mentality, align them purposefully, and unlock immense business value.

Defining the Domains: Two Sides of the Same Coin

While intertwined, security and compliance operate with different objectives, stakeholders, and tempos.

The Role of Security: The Frontline Defense

Security is the technical practice of safeguarding an organization’s digital assets from breaches, leaks, and cyberattacks. Its primary objective is to mitigate risk by preventing malicious actors from gaining unauthorized access to data.

A security program is built on three pillars:

• Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA): Ensuring data is accessible only to authorized users, cannot be improperly modified, and is available when needed.
• Prevention and Protection: Implementing technical controls like firewalls, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and encryption to protect data at rest, in transit, and at the endpoint.
• Detection and Response: Operating with a sense of urgency to identify and rapidly respond to cybersecurity incidents, minimizing potential damage.

The stakeholders are primarily technical—IT teams, security analysts, CIOs, and CISOs—who live in a world of real-time threats and immediate responses.

The Role of Compliance: The Strategic Audit

Compliance is the process of demonstrating that an organization’s technical controls and data privacy practices align with the established best practices defined by laws, regulations, and industry standards. Its goal is to build trust with stakeholders, customers, and partners by proving due diligence.

Compliance frameworks typically fall into two categories:

• Regulatory Requirements: Legally mandated rules governing an industry, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which carry penalties for violations.
• Security Standards: Collections of best practices for mitigating risk, such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) or the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Controls.

Compliance stakeholders are typically business and legal leaders—the CEO, General Counsel, and compliance officers—who translate technical controls into business risk and legal obligations. Their timeline is driven by audit cycles and legal processes, which often lag behind the daily threats security teams face.

The Power of Alignment: Where Compliance and Security Converge

When aligned, these two functions create a powerful synergy that reinforces the entire business.

Achieving Third-Party Validation

At its core, compliance validates the effectiveness of a security program. When an external auditor for a framework like ISO 27001 reviews your documentation, they provide an unbiased, third-party assessment that your security controls are working as designed. This certification is tangible proof of security excellence.

Building and Proving Customer Trust

In today’s market, customers demand transparency. The audit reports and certifications generated by your compliance program are essential for third-party risk management (TPRM) programs and security questionnaires. A security-first approach means your compliance documentation reflects what you actually do, building trust through authentic proof.

Accelerating Business Growth

Entering new markets or industries often requires meeting specific compliance mandates (e.g., HIPAA for healthcare). A security program built on a strong foundation of best practices means your existing controls often map to multiple frameworks. This adaptability allows your business to pivot and scale into new revenue streams more easily.

Justifying and Optimizing Security Investments

Compliance outcomes provide powerful data to inform budget decisions. When a security team needs to invest in new technology to counter an emerging threat, they can correlate that need with specific compliance requirements, proving the investment’s value and ROI to senior leadership in clear business terms.

A Blueprint for Alignment: Practical Steps for Success

Aligning security and compliance with business objectives multiplies their value. Here’s how to do it:

1. Create a Single Source of Truth

   Centralize security data from across your entire IT environment. This simplifies security monitoring, enhances threat correlation, and streamlines the evidence-gathering process for compliance audits, reducing operational costs.

2. Link Documentation to Real-World Activity

   Your compliance policies must reflect the actual security activities documented in your system logs. When policies and logs tell the same story, you create irrefutable proof that risks are being managed effectively.

3. Implement Continuous Control Monitoring

   Both security and compliance depend on continuous monitoring to detect anomalous behavior that could indicate a breach or a compliance failure. This proactive approach reduces data breach risk, compliance risk, and potential legal liability.

4. Align KPIs with Business Risk

   Your security and compliance Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be framed as business risk mitigation metrics. This connects technical activities directly to top-level business objectives and ensures everyone is working toward the same goal.

5. Visualize and Communicate Your Security Posture

   Use reporting dashboards to provide a shared view of the organization’s security posture. These visualizations give security teams at-a-glance insights into technical issues while offering the high-level risk summaries that compliance and executive leadership require.

Graylog Security: Bridging the Gap Between Compliance and Security

Executing this blueprint requires a platform that can bridge the technical realities of security with the strategic needs of compliance. This is where Graylog Security excels.

Graylog Security provides a single source of truth for all your security data, allowing you to rapidly mature your threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR) capabilities without the cost and complexity of traditional SIEMs. Our pre-packaged Illuminate content includes detection rules mapped to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, instantly upleveling your security operations.

By centralizing and correlating your logs, Graylog automates key monitoring and reporting tasks essential for compliance. Our anomaly detection and lightning-fast search capabilities (terabytes in milliseconds) empower your team to investigate alerts, reduce attacker dwell time, and generate the documentation needed to prove control effectiveness.

To learn how Graylog Security can help you align your security and compliance programs for strategic advantage, contact us today.

This article provides a list of key metrics that security teams should track to measure the effectiveness of their information security programs. These metrics are categorized into four main areas to provide a comprehensive view of an organization’s security posture.

The Four Categories of Metrics

1. Metrics for Security Vulnerability and Threat Management

These metrics focus on identifying, prioritizing, and remediating security weaknesses. They help teams understand how quickly they are addressing vulnerabilities and how resilient their systems are to known threats. Examples include:

• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD): The average time it takes to identify a security incident.
• Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): The average time it takes to contain and resolve a security incident.
• Patching Cadence: The frequency of applying security patches to systems.
• Number of Critical Vulnerabilities: The total count of high-severity vulnerabilities discovered.

2. Metrics for User Access and Identity Management

This category measures the security of user accounts and privileged access. These metrics are vital for preventing insider threats and unauthorized access. Examples include:

• MFA Adoption Rate: The percentage of users who have enabled Multi-Factor Authentication.
• Number of Inactive Accounts: The total count of user accounts that are no longer in use but still active.
• Privileged Account Activity: The frequency and nature of activity from high-privilege accounts.

3. Metrics for Security Awareness and Compliance

These metrics assess the effectiveness of security training and the organization’s adherence to regulatory requirements. Examples include:

• Phishing Simulation Success Rate: The percentage of employees who fail a simulated phishing test.
• Compliance Audit Findings: The number of non-compliance issues found during internal or external audits.
• Security Training Completion Rate: The percentage of employees who have completed mandatory security awareness training.

4. Metrics for Incident Response and Recovery

This final category measures the team’s ability to respond to and recover from a security breach. Examples include:

• Data Breach Cost: The total financial impact of a security incident.
• Backup Success Rate: The percentage of backups that are completed successfully.
• Time to Contain: The time it takes to stop a security incident from spreading.

Tracking these metrics provides a clear, data-driven view of an organization’s security posture, helping leaders make informed decisions and continuously improve their defenses.

This article outlines five key strategies for organizations to effectively defend against phishing attacks. Phishing remains one of the most common and dangerous cyber threats, and a layered defense is required to protect against it.

The Five Strategies

• 1. User Education and Training

  The first line of defense is your employees. Regularly train them to recognize phishing attempts, such as suspicious links, unusual sender addresses, and urgent, threatening language. Simulated phishing exercises can help reinforce this knowledge.

• 2. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

  Implementing MFA is a critical control. Even if an employee’s password is stolen through a phishing attack, MFA prevents attackers from gaining access to the account without a second form of verification.

• 3. Endpoint Security and Email Filtering

  Use robust endpoint security solutions and advanced email filtering to automatically detect and block malicious emails before they reach an employee’s inbox. This technology can identify and quarantine messages with malicious attachments or links.

• 4. Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

  DLP tools can prevent sensitive data from being exfiltrated from the network, even if a phishing attack is successful. These tools monitor data in transit and at rest, and can block unauthorized sharing of confidential information.

• 5. Network Monitoring and Log Management

  Finally, a comprehensive network monitoring and log management system is essential. By collecting and analyzing security logs, you can detect unusual activity—such as a user accessing a system from an unusual location after clicking a phishing link—and respond to the threat in real-time. This provides the visibility needed for a swift incident response.

Imagine you’re driving on a dark highway when your car hits an unseen object. There’s a sharp jolt, but everything seems fine, so you continue your journey. Miles later, a warning light flashes—your oil pressure is critical. That unseen object cracked your oil pan, creating a slow, silent leak that has now become an emergency.

In cybersecurity, these hidden dangers are **network vulnerabilities**—cracks in your digital infrastructure that, if left unaddressed, can lead to a devastating data breach. Understanding where these cracks form is the key to sealing them before it’s too late.

What is a Network Security Vulnerability?

A network security vulnerability is any flaw or weakness in your organization’s hardware, software, or processes that an attacker can exploit. Cybercriminals actively hunt for these weaknesses to gain unauthorized access, steal data, or deploy malware like ransomware. These vulnerabilities can be physical, such as a flaw in a router that allows an attacker to intercept data, or logical, like an application bug that lets an intruder pivot into critical parts of your network.

Where Do Vulnerabilities Hide? The Three Layers of Network Risk

Network vulnerabilities aren’t just one type of problem; they exist across your entire technology stack—from the physical hardware to the software it runs, and even in the actions of the people who use it.

1. The Physical Layer: Hardware and Device Risks

Every device connected to your network is a potential entry point. In today’s hyper-connected world, this perimeter is constantly expanding.

• Internet of Things (IoT) Devices: Smart cameras, sensors, and other connected devices often prioritize convenience over security. With weak default passwords and a lack of timely patches from manufacturers, they are prime targets for botnets like Mirai.
• Unauthorized and Personal Devices (BYOD): When employees connect personal phones or laptops to the corporate network, they can unknowingly introduce malware. Without control over the apps they install or their patching discipline, these devices pose a significant risk.
• Removable Media: A USB drive left in a parking lot is a classic social engineering trick. An unsuspecting employee’s curiosity can lead them to plug it into a workstation, unleashing malware that spreads across the network.
• Unsecured Wireless Access: A poorly configured Wi-Fi network is an open door for intruders. Weak encryption protocols and poor signal management can allow attackers to gain access to your internal network from the street.

2. The Logical Layer: Software and Configuration Flaws

The code and settings that govern your network are a common source of critical vulnerabilities.

• Misconfigured Firewalls: Firewalls are your network’s border control, but a simple typo or an outdated rule can leave a security gap wide enough for an attacker to slip through.
• Outdated or Unpatched Software: This is one of the most common and dangerous vulnerabilities. Attackers relentlessly exploit known flaws in operating systems and applications, making a disciplined patching program absolutely essential.
• Malware and Ransomware: While malware is an attack, its ability to propagate through a network turns it into a vulnerability for other systems. Once inside, it can spread laterally, infecting critical assets and escalating the breach.

3. The Human Layer: The Unpredictable Element

Technology is only as secure as the people who use it. Unintentional mistakes are often the weakest link in an organization’s defense.

• Phishing and Social Engineering: A convincing fake email can trick an employee into revealing their login credentials. With valid credentials, an attacker can bypass technical defenses and operate as a legitimate user, making them incredibly difficult to detect.
• Weak Passwords and Authentication: Simple, reused, or easily guessable passwords are a persistent vulnerability. A lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA) compounds this risk, making it trivial for attackers to take over accounts using brute-force methods.
• Insider Threats: Whether malicious or accidental, insiders with excessive access privileges can cause immense damage. An employee might intentionally steal data, or they could accidentally click a malicious link from a high-privilege account, giving an attacker the keys to the kingdom.

Building a Resilient Defense: A Framework for Mitigation

A strong defense isn’t about a single tool; it’s a continuous strategy built on visibility, control, and intelligence.

1. Gain Total Visibility: Know Your Weaknesses

You can’t protect what you can’t see.

• Vulnerability Scanning: Regularly scan all network assets to identify and map your weaknesses across operating systems, firmware, and applications.
• Centralized Monitoring: Use a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution to aggregate logs and security data from across your entire environment. This gives you a single pane of glass to correlate events and detect threats.

2. Establish Proactive Control: Strengthen Your Defenses

Once you can see your risks, you must act to close the gaps.

• Network Segmentation: Isolate your critical assets on separate, tightly controlled network segments. This contains a potential breach, preventing an attacker from moving laterally from a less secure area to your crown jewels.
• Disciplined Patch Management: Apply security updates in a timely manner. Prioritize patching based on the severity of the vulnerability and its exposure to threats.

3. Act with Intelligence: Anticipate the Attacker

Look beyond your own walls to understand the threat landscape.

• Incorporate Threat Intelligence: Use real-time intelligence feeds to understand which vulnerabilities are being actively exploited by attackers in the wild. This allows you to prioritize your remediation efforts on the threats that pose the most immediate danger.

We’ve all had “that cold”—the one that mostly clears up but leaves behind a nagging, persistent cough for weeks. In the world of cybersecurity, an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is the digital equivalent of that lingering cough, only far more dangerous. It’s an attack that stealthily breaches your network and then hides in the shadows, patiently waiting to achieve its objectives.

Understanding these silent, long-term threats is the first step toward building a truly resilient defense for your organization.

What Defines an Advanced Persistent Threat?

An Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is a highly sophisticated, targeted cyberattack where a malicious actor gains unauthorized access to a network and remains undetected for an extended period. Unlike common cybercriminals focused on quick financial gain, APT actors play the long game. The name itself tells the story:

• Advanced: The attackers use sophisticated, and often custom, tools and techniques to breach defenses. They are methodical, well-funded, and patient.
• Persistent: This is not a one-time event. The primary goal is to establish a long-term foothold within the target’s network, maintaining access for months or even years to continuously gather intelligence.
• Threat: Behind the attack is a coordinated human adversary—not just an automated script. These threat actors are typically well-organized groups targeting high-value entities like government agencies, defense contractors, and major corporations to conduct corporate or international espionage.

Their primary objective is data theft and intelligence gathering, not disruptive system damage.

The Anatomy of a Silent Breach: An APT’s Lifecycle

APT attacks unfold in distinct, methodical phases. While the specific tools may vary, the strategic process is consistent.

Phase 1: Infiltration – The Quiet Entry

The first step is to gain initial access. The attackers act like burglars casing a house, carefully looking for a way in.

• Reconnaissance: They scan networks for vulnerabilities, identify misconfigured systems, and gather intelligence on employees and infrastructure.
• Initial Access: They use their findings to breach the perimeter. Common methods include targeted phishing campaigns to steal credentials, exploiting unpatched software vulnerabilities, or even buying access from “Initial Access Brokers” on the dark web.
• Establish a Foothold: Once inside, they immediately deploy tools like backdoors or rootkits. This ensures they can maintain access to the compromised system even if their initial entry point is discovered and closed.

Phase 2: Expansion – Mapping the Territory

With a foothold secured, the attackers begin to explore. This phase is about moving deeper into the network and gaining more control.

• Lateral Movement: The attackers move silently from one system to another, mapping the network architecture and identifying where valuable data is stored.
• Privilege Escalation: The initial breach often occurs through a standard user account with limited permissions. The attackers then work to escalate their privileges, often by targeting and taking over administrator accounts. Gaining this level of access allows them to disable security controls, manipulate systems, and move freely.

Phase 3: Exfiltration – The Heist

This is the culmination of their efforts. Having mapped the network and gained privileged access, the attackers begin to steal the targeted data.

• Data Collection & Exfiltration: They gather, encrypt, and compress sensitive data before transferring it to their own servers. To avoid detection, they often exfiltrate data in small, slow increments that mimic normal network traffic.
• Covering Their Tracks: To distract security teams during the exfiltration, APT groups may launch a diversionary attack, such as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) or ransomware attack.
• Remaining Embedded: Even after the initial data theft, the attackers may choose to remain hidden in the network, allowing them to launch future attacks or continue stealing information over the long term.

Hunting for Digital Ghosts: How to Detect an APT

Because APTs are designed for stealth, detection is challenging. Security teams must shift from looking for loud alarms to hunting for subtle anomalies that, when connected, tell the story of a hidden intruder. Key signs include:

• Anomalous Log-in Activity: Look for unusual patterns, especially with privileged accounts, such as log-ins at odd hours or from unexpected geographic locations.
• Unexpected Data Flows: Monitor for abnormal network traffic, like large data transfers to external servers or unusual internal data bundling, which could indicate data being staged for exfiltration.
• Widespread Backdoor Trojans: The discovery of sophisticated malware designed to maintain persistent access on multiple machines is a strong indicator of an APT.
• Subtle, Persistent Issues: Small, recurring anomalies or unexplained account lockouts that seem minor on their own could be part of a larger, coordinated attack.

Building a Resilient Defense Against APTs

Defending against a patient and well-resourced adversary requires a multi-layered, proactive security strategy. Key best practices include:

• Shrink the Attack Surface: Regularly apply security patches, implement robust firewall rules, and continuously scan for and remediate vulnerabilities to give attackers fewer entry points.
• Enforce Strict Access Controls: Implement the principle of least privilege, ensuring users only have access to the data and systems essential for their jobs. Deploy a Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution to closely monitor and control high-value accounts.
• Adopt a Proactive Mindset: Don’t wait for alerts. Implement and automate threat hunting to actively search for indicators of compromise. Mapping your defenses to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK can help you focus on the tactics and techniques used by known APT groups.
• Secure Remote Connections: Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to encrypt all remote connections, making it harder for attackers to intercept data in transit.

HOUSTON — August 1, 2025 — Graylog, the platform built for SIEM, API protection, and Centralized Log Management, today announced its recognition as a ‘Leader’ and ‘Outperformer’ in GigaOm’s 2025 Radar Report for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM).

Recognition Highlights from GigaOm

The Graylog Security platform, built on the robust Graylog foundation, was specifically recognized for several key differentiators that are critical for modern SOC teams:

• Alarm Fidelity & Self-Tuning: Recognized for superior accuracy and the platform’s ability to optimize itself.
• Data Analysis & Risk Scoring: Acknowledged for its advanced data analysis capabilities and effective risk scoring based on enriched data.
• Anomaly Detection: Highlighted for its strong anomaly detection modules that receive, normalize, and enrich log data.
• Innovation & Evolution: Recognized for continuously evolving the platform, including the capability to filter incoming logs through streams and apply rules via pipelines.

The Core Value Proposition

Graylog is committed to providing high-impact tools that directly address the real challenges faced by today’s lean security teams. The platform ensures that analysts get the speed, clarity, and confidence needed to detect and respond to threats before they escalate.

Read the Full GigaOm Radar Report