Going SIEM-less in 2025: Saving Time, Money, and Headaches

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools have been around a long time. Most enterprise organizations and some SMBs have implemented a SIEM solution at one point or another, with varying levels of success. But the complexity and cost of most SIEM solutions have forced many organizations to look elsewhere for so-called “SIEMless” alternatives: Tools whose goals and functionality overlap with SIEMs, but are easier to implement, use, and afford.

Coming Apart at the SIEMs: Key Problems with SIEM Solutions

On paper, traditional SIEM solutions effortlessly sift through mountains of log data and help correlate events across a diverse array of servers, network devices, and endpoints. The idea here is to provide holistic visibility into attacks that might be spread across multiple network footholds. The reality is a little more complicated.

1. Alert Overload

SIEM tools create an extraordinary amount of noise, especially if not properly configured. Research published in Security Info Watch last year revealed that 14% of security teams claim to receive more than 10,000 alerts daily, while 4% get in excess of 100,000. Even in larger organizations with a dedicated security team, alert fatigue in inevitable.

Part of the problem is that many of these alerts lack the context necessary for security teams to easily distinguish between a genuine incident and a false positive. AI is beginning to change the game here, but it’s not perfect, and the time and effort required for this level of analysis is simply untenable. This problem is particularly dangerous for small and midsize organizations with lean teams and little to no expertise.

2. Exorbitant Costs

SIEMs have always been expensive, especially for SMBs with limited cybersecurity resources. A study published in CPO magazine in 2021 revealed that 43% of security practitioners believed they were overpaying for their SIEM relative to its capabilities and value delivered. Unfortunately, little has changed.

Cloud adoption has sent SIEM costs into the stratosphere. Data volumes have skyrocketed, and SIEM’s outdated pricing models have driven costs higher than even the largest businesses can afford.

3. Complexity and Integration Challenges

SIEM solutions can also be extremely difficult to implement and manage. Network and Security teams must commit to significant (and ongoing) manual configuration, integration, and maintenance efforts for an SIEM tool to be effective. 

Even then, as the volume of data increases, scalibility can become an issue. Query responses times increase, routine incident response tasks become a burden, and legitimate threats get ignored.

What Would the Perfect SIEM Alternative Look Like?

Many SMBs rely soley on a combination of their firewall logging and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools, leaving a network-sized hole in their internal visibility and security. Even the most advanced Firewalls are limited in their East/West visibility, and EDR can only be deployed on a certain percentage of endpoints, leaving out legacy systems, IoT, OT, and the like.

SIEMs can obviously collect more comprehensive data, but at all the costs we’ve already discussed. How, then, can organizations realize the benefits of SIEM without all the problems? Many organizations are combining EDR with network detection and response (NDR) that can provide visibility into traffic between endpoints, and log traffic from devices where an EDR agent isn’t possible.

Nomic’s SIEMless Alternative

A combination of EDR and managed NDR can help those who can’t manage a SIEM within their environments. At Nomic, we provide a unique, comprehensive solution to this problem:

• Nomic Outpost can help customers hide their perimeter by preventing attackers from conducting reconnaissance, identifying misconfigurations and other weaknesses that malicious actors could use to gain access to the network, as well as reduce the firewall’s workload.
• Nomic Insight provides a broader network view, analyzing East/West traffic between devices and North/South external communications. It uses network flows to detect anomalies and suspicious behavior across the entire network, including areas that EDR may miss, like unmanaged devices or lateral movement. This provides security teams with richer context and a more complete understanding of potential threats without traditional SIEM tools' complexity, cost, and resource intensity.

With that visibility, internal teams can quickly identify infected devices, fix misconfigurations, and prioritize vulnerabilities for remediation. They can also rest assured that their systems are under the watchful eye of a 24/7 security team that can help with support, troubleshooting, and research.

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