Compliance-Aware SIEM Overlay — Built for Small-to-Mid DIB
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 — scales with 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.
Compliance Workflows Alongside Your SIEM
Keep your SIEM of record for log retention, event correlation, detection and threat hunting. Advisedly provides SIEM integration and compliance workflows; it is not a bundled native SIEM or an EDR replacement.
Collection and Prioritization
Configured connectors can import supported audit events and findings. KEV and EPSS enrichment help prioritize vulnerability findings. Coverage depends on each connector, data source and deployment profile; the presence of a connector is not proof of continuous ingestion or detection effectiveness.
Pricing and Retention
Advisedly's system-based platform pricing is separate from your SIEM's ingestion, storage and retention costs. Agree capacity and retention requirements for the selected deployment before purchase. Retain source logs in your approved system of record under your retention policy.
Compliance Context
Imported findings can support evidence review, control assessment and POA&M workflows. Cross-framework lookup uses curated crosswalk data where available. A security event alone is not an assessor determination or an automatic change to an official SPRS score. Review the evidence and control implementation before recording an assessment outcome.
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.
Evaluate a Bounded Scope
Agree the connectors, supported record types and compliance workflows to evaluate. Keep dedicated security analytics and kernel EDR in place. Validate imports, failure handling and evidence review on your own data before relying on a workflow.
The Consolidation Math
Count what your own stack costs across SIEM, scanner, GRC, endpoint, ticketing, STIG tooling and evidence storage, then compare it with the scope you actually need. We publish no competitor price benchmarks.
Advisedly combines SIEM integration, scanner (~350K+ Advisedly-authored plugins within an 8.2M+ catalog), GRC (500+ frameworks), endpoint telemetry and EDR integration (keep your kernel EDR), workflow automation, STIG compliance, and evidence management. Coverage is Full, Partial or Integrate by workflow; compare your required scope rather than assuming wholesale replacement.
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.
Use vulnerability prioritization and control context to organize remediation work. Keep detection and alert correlation in your SIEM of record. Measure any reduction in triage time during a scoped evaluation; no noise-reduction outcome is guaranteed.
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 790+ Pages
The platform backing this SIEM — including the correlation engine, detection rules, event normalization, and compliance mapping — runs 45,000+ automated tests across 790+ 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?
Advisedly uses system-based platform pricing, not a bundled native SIEM offer. Your SIEM provider's ingestion, capacity and retention charges remain separate. See pricing for the platform formula and request a scoped quote.
What if I ingest more than 1 TB/day?
Keep your dedicated SIEM for analytics, threat hunting and retention. Validate the supported connector and outbound-forwarding scope and capacity for your deployment; no throughput is promised here.
Does it map events to controls?
Supported findings and evidence can be associated with controls, and cross-framework lookup uses curated data where available. Confirm coverage for each source and framework. Human assessment of control implementation remains necessary; events do not automatically establish a passing or failing official SPRS score.
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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