A Built-In SIEM Alternative to Per-GB Pricing

The Per-GB Problem

If you're a 200-person defense contractor ingesting 50-200 GB/day of log data, you already know the math. Per-GB SIEM licensing — the pricing model Splunk popularized and most enterprise SIEMs followed — commonly runs $200K-$2M/year depending on volume, retention requirements, and add-on modules.

That model made sense when log management was the primary value and large enterprises were the only buyers. But for small-to-mid DIB (Defense Industrial Base) organizations — the 100-to-2,000 employee contractors handling CUI and managing CMMC compliance — per-GB pricing creates a perverse incentive: ingest less data to save money, which directly conflicts with the continuous monitoring requirements your compliance framework mandates.

You end up in a position where:

Security teams filter logs before ingestion to control costs, losing visibility
Retention policies are set by budget, not by compliance requirements (NIST 800-53 AU-11 requires retention aligned to records retention policy — typically 3-7 years for DoD work)
Adding new data sources requires a budget conversation, not a security decision
The SIEM bill alone consumes 30-60% of the entire security tooling budget

The per-GB model doesn't charge for value delivered. It charges for data existing.

What's Included in Advisedly's Built-In SIEM

Advisedly includes a compliance-aware SIEM as part of the platform — not as an add-on, not per-GB, not volume-licensed. It's architecturally integrated because compliance without visibility is theater.

Event Ingestion and Correlation

Log collection from endpoints, network devices, cloud services, identity providers, and application layers
Event correlation engine that identifies attack patterns across data sources — not just individual alerts, but behavioral sequences
Detection rules — pre-built and custom, mapped to MITRE ATT&CK techniques and compliance controls simultaneously
KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) feed integration — CISA's authoritative catalog cross-referenced against your environment in real time
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) enrichment — probability-based prioritization layered on top of CVSS severity
Normalized event taxonomy — regardless of source format, events normalize to a consistent schema for cross-source correlation

No Per-GB Licensing

The pricing model is platform-based, not volume-based. Ingest what your security posture requires. Add data sources because they improve visibility, not because you got budget approval for another 10 GB/day.

For a 200-person DIB contractor, that typically means:

Endpoint logs (Windows Event Log, syslog, EDR telemetry)
Network flow data and firewall logs
Identity provider events (authentication, privilege changes)
Cloud service audit trails
Application-layer events from business-critical systems

All of it. Without the per-GB tax.

Retention Without Penalty

Compliance frameworks specify retention — AU-11 (NIST 800-53), 3.3.1/3.3.2 (NIST 800-171), and various DoD-specific requirements. Per-GB pricing punishes retention. Advisedly's model doesn't. Keep the data as long as your compliance program requires.

Compliance-Context Correlation

Here's what makes a built-in SIEM fundamentally different from a standalone one: every event understands its compliance context.

When a detection rule fires, the alert doesn't just say "suspicious authentication pattern detected." It says:

Technical context: Failed authentication from IP X followed by successful auth from IP Y within 30 seconds, user account Z
Compliance context: Maps to NIST 800-171 practice 3.1.1 (Limit system access to authorized users), control AC-7 (Unsuccessful Logon Attempts), and CMMC practice AC.L2-3.1.8 (Unsuccessful Logon Attempts)
POA&M context: If this finding pattern matches an existing POA&M item, it links automatically
SPRS impact: If the finding represents a control failure, the real-time SPRS score adjusts

A standalone SIEM gives you the first bullet. A compliance-aware SIEM gives you all four. The difference is whether your SOC analyst needs to manually crosswalk every alert to your compliance posture — or whether the platform does it natively.

This isn't a dashboard overlay on top of a generic SIEM. The correlation engine was built knowing that every event eventually maps to a control, and that control maps to a framework requirement, and that requirement affects an assessment score. The data model encodes that relationship from ingestion forward.

The Coexistence Strategy

We're practitioners. We know "rip and replace your Splunk" isn't a realistic conversation for many organizations. Splunk has strengths: massive-scale analytics, SPL query language maturity, a decade of custom dashboards and saved searches that represent institutional knowledge.

Advisedly supports a coexistence model:

Forward to Splunk (or Any of 7 SIEM Families)

Advisedly operates as an outbound SIEM forwarder to seven vendor families. If your SOC runs Splunk for large-scale analytics and threat hunting, keep it. Advisedly forwards enriched, normalized events to Splunk — now with compliance context attached. Your analysts get the same data they're used to, plus the control mapping they previously did manually.

Consolidate Where Scale Permits

For sub-1TB/day organizations (which is the vast majority of DIB contractors under 2,000 employees), the built-in SIEM handles the full workload. No separate tool, no separate license, no separate team managing it. The consolidation isn't just cost — it's operational complexity reduction.

Hybrid by Data Type

Some organizations split by data type: high-volume network flow data stays in Splunk (where the per-GB model is already sunk cost and the analysts have mature queries); everything else routes through Advisedly's built-in SIEM with native compliance mapping. This is a pragmatic middle ground.

The Consolidation Math

DIB organizations commonly run a stack that looks like this:

Tool Category	Typical Annual Cost (Sub-500 Employee DIB)
SIEM (per-GB)	$200K-$800K
Vulnerability scanner	$30K-$150K
GRC platform	$50K-$200K
Endpoint detection	$25K-$100K
Ticketing / workflow	$50K-$200K
STIG assessment tooling	$15K-$50K
Evidence repository	$10K-$30K

Total: commonly $380K-$1.5M/year in tooling before headcount.

Advisedly consolidates these into one platform: SIEM, scanner (~350K+ plugins), GRC (500+ frameworks), endpoint detection, workflow automation, STIG compliance, and evidence management. The 49+ tools replaced isn't marketing — it's a literal count of point solutions the platform subsumes.

The consolidation value isn't just the licensing delta. It's:

One data model. Events, findings, controls, and evidence live in one system. No manual crosswalking.
One team. Your analysts work in one platform, not five consoles.
One audit trail. When the assessor asks "show me your continuous monitoring evidence," it's one export — not a scavenger hunt across six tools.
One vendor relationship. One contract, one support channel, one integration surface.

Addressing Alert Fatigue

Per-GB SIEMs generate alert volume proportional to ingestion volume — more data, more noise. Alert fatigue is the #1 cited pain point among SOC analysts, with studies consistently showing 40-60% of alerts are false positives that still require triage time.

Advisedly's compliance-aware correlation reduces noise structurally:

Control-mapped detection rules fire only when an event pattern represents an actual control violation — not every anomaly, but security-relevant anomalies in compliance context
EPSS-weighted prioritization ranks findings by exploitation probability, not just CVSS severity (a CVSS 7.0 with 94% EPSS matters more than a CVSS 9.8 with 0.1% EPSS)
KEV cross-reference automatically escalates events involving known-exploited vulnerabilities
Behavioral baselines reduce false positives by understanding what "normal" looks like for each environment before alerting on deviation

The result is fewer, higher-fidelity alerts that each carry compliance context. Your analysts spend time on response, not triage.

The Honest Concession

At very large ingest scales — consistently above 1 TB/day, with dedicated SOC teams running complex hunt operations and multi-year analytics — a dedicated SIEM platform (Splunk, or similar enterprise-scale alternatives) may still be the right primary tool for the raw log analytics workload.

Advisedly's sweet spot for SIEM is the sub-1TB/day DIB organization where:

The per-GB cost is disproportionate to the organization's size
The compliance mapping is as important as the raw detection
Tool consolidation materially reduces operational complexity
The team managing the SIEM is the same team managing compliance (because it's a 3-person security team, not a 30-person SOC)

If you're Lockheed Martin, keep Splunk. If you're a 300-person cleared contractor wondering why your SIEM bill is half your security budget, there's a better model.

Deployment Flexibility

For DIB organizations with CUI handling requirements, deployment matters. Advisedly supports:

On-premises deployment — run the full platform within your enclave, air-gapped if required
Customer-accredited IL5 enclaves — on-prem/air-gap can be installed there; Advisedly is not IL5 authorized
CAC/PIV authentication — native support, not a bolt-on SSO adapter
Hybrid models — SIEM collectors run on-prem where the data lives; management and reporting surfaces run in managed or self-hosted environments

Per-GB SIEMs in air-gapped environments introduce a secondary problem: usage metering. Volume-based licensing depends on measuring ingest and often involves true-up reporting to the vendor — cumbersome in disconnected environments. Platform-based licensing avoids this entirely.

Procurement

Advisedly is Tradewinds awardable — accessible through DoD's streamlined acquisition pathway. For contracting officers evaluating SIEM consolidation, this means faster path to evaluation without the 12-18 month procurement cycles traditional enterprise SIEM renewals often involve.

45,000+ Tests Against 650+ Pages

The platform backing this SIEM — including the correlation engine, detection rules, event normalization, and compliance mapping — runs 45,000+ automated tests across 650+ dashboard pages. This isn't a startup MVP. It's a production system with the test coverage density of infrastructure software, because that's what federal customers require.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there per-GB pricing?

No. Advisedly's SIEM is included in the platform subscription. Ingest volume is not a billing dimension. Add data sources based on security requirements, not budget constraints. Retention is governed by your compliance needs, not your willingness to pay per-GB storage costs.

What if I ingest more than 1 TB/day?

At that scale, the coexistence model is typically the right approach: keep your dedicated SIEM for large-scale analytics and threat hunting, and use Advisedly's outbound forwarder to feed it enriched, compliance-mapped events. You get the compliance context natively in Advisedly and the scale analytics in your dedicated platform. Both tools serve their purpose.

Does it map events to controls?

Yes — natively, at ingestion time. Every event that triggers a detection rule carries its control mapping: which NIST 800-53 control family, which 800-171 practice, which CMMC level requirement. When an event represents a control failure, it automatically updates the relevant assessment, can generate or update a POA&M entry, and adjusts the real-time SPRS score. The compliance context isn't a dashboard layer — it's the data model.

See Where You Stand

If your per-GB SIEM bill exceeds your entire GRC budget — and you're still manually crosswalking alerts to compliance controls — the consolidation math deserves ten minutes of evaluation.

Advisedly's free readiness assessment maps your current tooling stack against a consolidated model and shows you the delta.

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