Monitoring and observability. At a casual glance, they sound similar, with only a fuzzy grey line dividing them. However, their functional contexts—threat intelligence and security operations—are complex, nuanced, and continually evolving from both business and technical perspectives.

Explore the similarities and differences between monitoring and observability, including:

• What they are
• How they complement each other
• Key differences and overlaps
• Real-world use cases
• Analyst insights and trends

What is Monitoring?

Monitoring is the process of collecting and analyzing data from systems, applications, or network infrastructure to track and assess their performance, availability, and security. It operates on a known set of metrics — like CPU load, network throughput, and log data — to alert teams to deviations from normal patterns. While these are IT metrics, they’re also pivotal for cybersecurity since breaches always manifest within an organization’s IT infrastructure. In this context, security monitoring specifically helps detect and respond to threats, supporting tools like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS).

Example: Anomali ThreatStream uses monitoring to continuously gather data on threat intelligence, watching for indicators of compromise (IoCs) that align with known patterns and threat actors. It enriches its findings with relevant data, providing important context that helps analysts prioritize threat investigations.  

What is Observability?

Observability is a broader, deeper approach focused on understanding the internal state of a system based on its outputs. Whereas monitoring identifies issues based on known patterns, observability examines complex, distributed systems in real time to help identify unknown issues. It incorporates traces, metrics, and logs to offer a dynamic view of what’s happening across systems and how various components interrelate, facilitating proactive insights. Put simply, you observe until you detect something noteworthy, then you monitor it.  

Example: Anomali’s Security Analytics solution correlates security data with internal telemetry to construct a deep, adaptive understanding of evolving threats. This contextual analysis helps predict the potential impact of an attack.

How Monitoring and Observability Complement Security Operations

Observability and monitoring both contribute to incident detection, response, and forensics:

• Monitoring helps spot immediate, observable threats based on predefined indicators, generating alerts when abnormal behavior is detected. For example, why is my CFO trying to log in from North Korea? ‍
• Observability supports threat hunting and advanced detection by correlating telemetry data across multiple sources, offering contextual insights that enhance incident analysis. For example, where in my potential attack surface am I exposed?

When a SIEM detects unusual activity in a network, observability tools can help analysts dive into user interactions, trace paths, and assess lateral movement, identifying how a threat might propagate and affect other systems.

How Monitoring and Observability Complement Threat Intelligence

In CTI, monitoring gathers known threat indicators, which is essential for threat intelligence feeds and building situational awareness. Observability builds on this by enriching threat intelligence with real-time data, mapping threat actor patterns to established frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK®, and predicting the likelihood of emerging attack vectors.

Example: Anomali ThreatStream integrates monitoring for collecting threat data and observability for contextual threat analysis. By synthesizing threat data across multiple environments, ThreatStream provides a holistic view that improves detection and response efficiency.

Key Differences and Overlaps

Monitoring acts as the frontline defense in observing set indicators, while observability helps analyze root causes and identify previously unknown threats. Both contribute to a proactive security posture.

Real-World Use Cases

Ransomware Detection and Response

In a recent case, a Fortune 500 company used Anomali ThreatStream and Security Analytics to address a ransomware attack:

• Monitoring: Anomali ThreatStream quickly identified suspicious outbound communication indicative of a known ransomware family. ‍
• Observability: By diving deeper into the contextual data, analysts uncovered the attack vector, analyzed how the ransomware payload propagated, and identified vulnerable systems.

Observability provided insights into the attacker’s behaviors. It enabled a faster, comprehensive response, isolating affected systems and deploying tailored countermeasures, including sending automated alerts to relevant ISACs. Through these efforts, the team neutralized the attack before it gained traction.  

Zero-Day Threat Analysis

Observability can be invaluable in identifying zero-day exploits, whereas monitoring may miss early-stage activity. One financial institution using Anomali’s Security Analytics observed unusual but unclassified system behavior. Instead of isolated alerts, the Anomali platform traced abnormal patterns and matched them with emerging threat tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) from CTI feeds. This real-time observability allowed the team to mitigate the threat before it could begin moving laterally.

Leveraging Both Monitoring and Observability for Comprehensive Security

Both observability and monitoring are essential for robust security operations and threat Intelligence. Each provides distinct benefits:

• Monitoring is indispensable for real-time operational insights and for providing quick alerts on known issues. ‍
• Observability offers deeper insights and is ideal for proactive threat hunting, advanced analytics, and mapping complex attack paths.

Organizations that combine monitoring with observability — especially through tools like Anomali ThreatStream and Security Analytics — gain a critical advantage in navigating today’s cybersecurity landscape. The synergy between the two approaches provides a shield against immediate threats and the insight needed to preempt future attacks.

Using both monitoring and observability ensures that security operations and threat intelligence teams remain agile, proactive, and well-informed — key traits in an evolving threat landscape. A blended approach using both tools is increasingly indispensable for companies prioritizing security resilience.

Ready to see how Anomali’s monitoring and observability can uplevel your security posture? Request a demo.

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