Summary

The CSA MC can integrate with several third-party applications to provide a well-rounded security view of your network for your security and monitoring staff. The Cisco Security Monitor is just one those applications that the CSA MC can integrate. Although the CSA MC itself is the most efficient way to monitor a CSA deployment, the Security Monitor capability to correlate your entire Host Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) and Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) deployment can prove a very valuable asset. Whether you choose to implement the Cisco Security Monitor, a third-party aggregation and reporting tool, or just the CSA MC itself, it is at the very least worth taking some time to understand what benefits a correlation tool can provide.