In-House vs. Outsourced SIEM Management: Discover the True Cost of IT Security (Updated November 2022)

Your SIEM management needs will grow over time. Can your information security team follow suit?

Security information event management is one of the pillars of effective information security. Capturing and investigating event logs lets security operators detect and respond to threats in real time. 

Your SIEM platform collects log data from across your entire IT environment and aggregates those logs into a single report. This eliminates the need for manual monitoring and allows security teams to quickly trigger alerts when security incidents occur. Having those logs in one place makes it much easier to conduct thorough investigations and improve your security posture over time. 

But even the most advanced SIEM platform is only as effective as the information security team that manages it.

For many organizations, implementing robust technology isn't the primary challenge – it's recruiting, managing, and retaining qualified security specialists.

SIEM Implementation is Just the First Step

Deploying a fully functional SIEM platform ensures organizations have access to the technology needed to capture log data and analyze it for security insights. For a deployment to be successful, it must generate comprehensive logs from every corner of your IT environment. 

This requires integration, which can be a complex undertaking. Connecting a SIEM with highly distributed enterprise infrastructure and a remote-enabled workforce requires specialist expertise. 

This is where managed security consultants like Lumif often come in. There's no need to onboard new hires for a one-time implementation. However, many organizations underestimate the costs of operating their SIEM long-term.

Cybersecurity Talent Costs Grow Quickly 

As organizations grow, they will inevitably add new assets and users to the network environment. In order for the SIEM platform to reliably secure the organization against cybersecurity risk, every change and addition requires an additional integration step. 

It doesn't take long for security needs to outpace the potential for in-house growth. For example, to achieve 24/7 security event coverage, you need to hire a bare minimum of eight security analysts.  

Let's look at the numbers:

• According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average information security analyst earns an annual salary of $102,600. 
• Federal payroll taxes will increase that sum by at least 15%. This brings the total to about $117,900.  
• US employers spent almost 30% of employee salary costs on benefits in 2021, on average. In-demand cybersecurity talent can easily demand more, but at the bare minimum, this brings the cost of a single employee up to $148,680.  
• Achieving 24/7 security coverage requires at least eight analysts, which brings the total employee operating cost to $1.2 million in the first year. 

In-house Operating Costs Do Not Scale Well

Keep in mind that, unlike your SIEM license renewal, these costs are not fixed. They're incredibly volatile.

After your team gains a bit of experience, they'll start receiving attractive job offers from other companies, including your competitors. 

You won't be able to retain your security analysts for long unless you give them raises and expand their benefits. With the bare minimum of eight analysts employed, you can't afford to lose a single employee – and they'll know it. Your second year performing SIEM managing in-house could easily cost more than $1 million. 

Once your organization grows, you'll need to add new analysts to your team as well. Your company will need to maintain extremely high revenue growth in order to maintain its constantly growing security team.

The in-house approach does not permit the economies of scale that corporate stakeholders and executives are looking for.

Outsourced SIEM Management: Scalable Security Excellence with Fixed Costs

Delegating SIEM management to a reputable service provider helps security teams scale their efforts without exposing themselves to unsustainable costs.

Managed detection and response vendors like Lumifi bring decades of security operations expertise to the equation, offering scalable technical expertise at a fraction of the cost of a single new hire. 

This provides IT leaders with a professional security team that grows alongside their needs. Your organization can leverage hard-to-find security talent with specialist expertise on an as-needed basis. Custom code, personalized correlation rules, and platform-specific plugin development become feasible with Lumif's security team acting as an extension of your own. 

Instead of increasing every year, managed detection and response costs remain consistent and predictable over time.

As your organization grows, it can leverage economies of scale that aren't possible otherwise. Expansion ultimately makes best-in-class security cost less, not more. 

Conduct your own cost-benefit analysis with the data below. Discover how you can leverage Lumifi's managed detection and response services to make the most of your SIEM platform and deploy cost-efficient 24/7 security operations. 

Talk with our expert information security team about your MDR needs!