Understanding SIEM:  Why, When, and What are SIEM expenses

Starting the journey to creating your organization’s cybersecurity shield is similar to setting sail into uncharted waters. The horizon gleams with the promise of safety and resilience, but the future is often clouded with challenging questions: when should you boost the sails of your security system? And how can you plan the journey without budget overruns? Here is where a SIEM solution comes in handy. SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) is a cybersecurity solution that helps to detect, analyze, and respond to security threats in real-time. It collects and analyzes data from various sources — like servers, firewalls, endpoints, and cloud environments — to identify suspicious activity and potential cyber threats.

In this blog post, based on our recent webinar about SIEM, we’ll explore why you might need a SIEM solution when to implement one, and how much it might cost, providing some help for your decision-making process.

SIEM benefits: Why use a SIEM solution?

Businesses adopt SIEM tools to improve their security posture and simplify operations. Among the key benefits of using SIEM are: 

1. It offers a centralized threat detection and response

A SIEM aggregates logs and data from various sources, such as network devices, endpoints, and cloud platforms,  delivering a unified sight of your security environment. This centralized approach helps security teams identify and respond to threats faster by correlating events across your infrastructure.

2. It is necessary for regulatory compliance

Industries such as healthcare, finance, and government must comply with uncompromising HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS regulations. SIEM will no longer be optional for compliance in 2025. According to the most common compliance regulations such as SOC2, HIPPA, PCI DSS, and FISMA, logs should be not only gathered but carefully monitored. One of the best ways to monitor logs is by implementing a SIEM solution. 

SIEM simplifies business processes by automating log collection, enrichment, and reporting, fulfilling the rigorous requirements of compliance frameworks.

3. It helps with proactive security

SIEM solutions go far beyond detection, offering SIEM tools to foreknow potential vulnerabilities. Advanced features, such as threat intelligence, security automation, and behavioral analytics, help businesses to predict and, thus, prevent breaches.

4. It improves operational efficiency

SIEM automates many repetitive tasks, such as log analysis and alert prioritization, freeing up your security team to focus on strategic activities. By reducing noise from false positives, a well-configured SIEM improves team productivity and effectiveness.

When a SIEM meets reality: SIEM use cases and challenges

Knowing the right time to implement a SIEM is crucial for maximizing its value and avoiding unnecessary expenses. What do you need to know and which factors do you need to evaluate before opting for a SIEM solution? From a market and product perspective, the choice of a SIEM solution for a specific project, company, or organization typically depends on several key factors:

1. Organizational maturity: If your organization is scaling rapidly or handling sensitive data, a SIEM can provide the oversight needed to maintain security and compliance. Elastic is often preferred for businesses looking to scale rapidly.

2. Incident complexity: When manual methods become insufficient to manage the volume and complexity of security incidents, a SIEM is the logical next step. It allows automated analysis and contextualization, making it easier to handle sophisticated attacks. Splunk is a strong choice for handling complex environments with advanced analytics.

3. Regulatory objectives: New compliance regulations often act as a trigger for SIEM adoption. A SIEM ensures your business can meet these requirements without overburdening existing resources. IBM QRadar is commonly chosen for organizations with strict compliance needs.

4. Cost-benefit ratio: Consider a SIEM when the potential cost of breaches, downtime, or fines outweighs the investment in a centralized security solution. Elastic stands out as a budget-friendly option without compromising functionality.

Another aspect is connected with implementing a SIEM solution. This process can come with a wide array of potential roadblocks and be challenging, expensive, and time-consuming. It’s not enough just to purchase SIEM, it’s necessary to make it a tool for operational excellence with real business value. A well-implemented SIEM becomes a strategic asset, not just a checkbox. 

A key objective for any SIEM is to accelerate incident response by connecting the dots: data across endpoints, networks, and other systems. These correlations allow security teams to reconstruct an incident timeline and identify critical actions like email account breaches, VPN access misuse, or payload deployments. When the system algorithms are poorly designed, SIEM solutions generate overwhelming volumes of raw logs without meaningful senses, leaving teams with the daunting task of manually piecing together events.

Resource demands: Implementing and managing a SIEM solution

Deploying and maintaining a SIEM is a resource-intensive initiative. Beyond the initial investment, businesses must dedicate significant resources to manage the system. Tasks such as correlating data, managing storage, and configuring filters require constant engagement, often meaning that you need a full-time team or centralized security operations group.

The hidden SIEM expenses also require careful consideration. Storage requirements can escalate rapidly, especially when logs are not effectively filtered or correlated. For instance, data retention policies or the volume of logs generated might require additional storage infrastructure, significantly increasing operational expenses. Moreover, some SIEM providers pass on costs for associated compute resources, such as AI engines or cloud-based analytics, which can boost the total cost of ownership.

SIEM expenditure isn’t what it seems at first sight. 

Technical challenges: fine-tuning and maintenance

SIEM systems demand deep customization to align with an organization’s unique requirements. Achieving this level of precision is time-consuming and technically demanding. Common issues include a high volume of false positives and the need for continuous improvement through the development of correlation rules. Pre-packaged rules provided by SIEM vendors often fall short, requiring extensive advancements made by security teams. In other cases, untailored SIEM system can lead to alert fatigue and delayed threat detection. 

To handle all these challenges, businesses can benefit from partnering with Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers. These providers bring pre-tested correlation rules and expertise, enabling a smoother and more efficient SIEM implementation. They can also take on the heavy lifting of optimization, allowing in-house teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Cost framework for SIEM: buy vs. build dilemma 

 When considering the implementation of a SIEM system, organizations often face the dilemma of building a custom solution in-house or purchasing a commercial off-the-shelf product. This decision is based on several critical factors, including cost, control, integration capabilities, and maintenance requirements.

In the video below, Art Ocain from Airiam tells a story from his experience on how the company solved “the build or buy” puzzle.

But as you can imagine, implementing a security system was just the beginning. The adoption of Microsoft Sentinel led to new challenges and required a lot of resources.

With all the factors such as labor costs, and data storage expenditure, the decision to switch from managing SIEM in-house to outsourcing was made. It’s important to remember that just having a SIEM isn’t enough, you need to have expert knowledge and experience to make it work right. In this case, outsourcing can reduce operational costs while giving access to cybersecurity experts who fine-tune and optimize the SIEM for maximum efficiency.

UnderDefense Managed SIEM: flexible security, maximum protection

At UnderDefense, we specialize in Managed SIEM and Co-Managed SIEM solutions, ensuring that businesses of all sizes get cost-effective, 24/7 security without the complexity of managing it alone. Whether you’re looking for SIEM as a service or need expert SIEM fine-tuning to optimize your current setup, we deliver tailored solutions that enhance your threat detection, response, and compliance efforts.

At UnderDefense, you get: 

• 24/7 Security Operations – Continuous monitoring to detect and respond to threats in real time.
• SIEM Optimization & Fine-Tuning – Customized rules, threat intelligence, and log correlation for an effective SIEM strategy.
• Cost-Effective SIEM – Flexible, affordable SIEM pricing models that scale with your needs.
• Compliance & Reporting Support – Meet regulatory standards (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR) with automated reporting.
• Seamless Integration – Works with leading SIEM platforms (Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Elastic, etc.).
• Expert-Driven Incident Response – A team of cybersecurity pros helping you respond to threats faster.

We offer three flexible cooperation models, allowing you to choose the level of control and support that fits your security needs. 

The variety of cooperation models helps businesses achieve a stronger security posture while keeping SIEM operations efficient and scalable.

Wrapping up 

Implementing a SIEM system is a complex but worthwhile investment for organizations aiming to strengthen their security posture. Success requires a clear understanding of operational demands, resource allocation, and technical nuances. By addressing these challenges through careful planning and using external expertise, organizations can unlock the full potential of their SIEM systems, improving threat detection and incident response capabilities while controlling costs.