As I celebrate my first year as head of product management at Graylog, I’ve had the unique privilege of re-immersing myself in the world of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) from a new perspective. The past year has underscored one critical lesson: staying competitive in SIEM isn’t about adding features; it’s about finding fresh approaches to meet the real needs of security teams. Today’s cybersecurity landscape demands more than just evolutionary updates—what’s needed is revolutionary change.
The Plague of Incremental Development
Over the years, I’ve seen the SIEM market evolve, but too often, this evolution follows a predictable path. Vendors add new features to keep pace with one another, resulting in products with similar capabilities but little differentiation. This feature-centric approach leaves security operations (SecOps) teams with tools that overpromise and underdeliver, contributing to the very complexity they are supposed to manage. As feature differentiation reduces, vendors resort to ‘speeds and feeds’ marketing, but the number of threat detection rules, machine learning algorithms, or LLM-assistants a vendor supports doesn’t equate to actual threat coverage or operational efficiency.
Evolution vs Revolution
As we develop Graylog’s technical roadmap, I’m reminded that the true differentiators in SIEM lie in asking fundamental questions about how we approach security challenges. Rather than following industry trends, we’re focusing on pioneering solutions that address the core pain points in SecOps. This isn’t about features; it’s about rethinking how to deliver on the promise of SIEM. Instead of evolving incremental features, true revolutionary change comes from challenging the status quo and considering approaches that may seem unconventional but are ultimately more effective.
Henry Ford wisely stated, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” As a vendor, it is our responsibility to challenge ourselves to get out of the forest and see existing problems in a new light to offer novel approaches.
Ripe for Revolutionary Innovation
1. Contextual Awareness and Automation
Security teams need context, not just alerts. At Graylog, we are exploring ways to enhance contextual awareness, enabling automation that surfaces actionable insights rather than overwhelming SOC analysts with data. Finding security relevancy requires more than risk-prioritization, it is about internalizing identity and asset context and marrying that with threat intelligence. By programmatically understanding context and identifying corroborating evidence, revolutionary SIEMs move beyond static, unmanageable playbooks to dynamic, appropriate remediation steps for each unique situation.
2. Intelligent Data Management
SIEMs require centralized ingestion of data for analysis. That made sense when we needed to bring together all the logs generated across networking and security infrastructure installed within the enterprise. Today’s IT world is incredibly de-centralized, spanning across remote users and public cloud environments. At Graylog, we are exploring optimal methods to identify actionable vs stand by data to avoid the costs and inefficiencies incurred when transferring, processing, and storing data across public cloud borders. Instead of demanding all the logs from each log source for analysis, Graylog’s Data Routing allows for log source streams to be separated by data required for analysis vs everything else, where the ‘everything else’ is retrievable if needed in an investigation. This concept can be applied to existing data lakes also. By doing so, we see a means to establish new economics with SIEM ownership.
3. Simplicity in Complexity
One of the key lessons from my first year at Graylog has been that complexity does not have to be a burden. Our vision includes simplifying workflows, reducing clicks to insights, and designing intuitive interfaces that make even the most complex security tasks accessible and manageable. Even as we add new capabilities, the tenet is to see how we can still reduce administrative overhead. While SaaS SIEM removes certain aspects of SIEM management, log source onboarding and alignment of log sources to use case fulfillment is still a challenge in most SIEMs. We see opportunities to ‘connect the dots’ between data, analytics, and use cases that simplify how to configure the SIEM to meet each customers’ objectives.
Why This Matters for Security Operations Teams
In an era where SecOps teams face mounting cyberattacks and resource constraints, differentiated SIEM solutions that provide revolutionary improvements are essential. Security practitioners do not need another tool that offers the same old experience; they need platforms that empower them to tackle security challenges with confidence and precision.
The Future of SIEM is Differentiation Through Innovation
Reflecting on the past year, I am more convinced than ever that SIEM needs revolutionary innovation to truly meet the demands of today’s security landscape. At Graylog, we’re committed to pushing the boundaries of what a SIEM platform can do, not by adding more features but by challenging conventional approaches and driving transformative change.
As we look ahead, I’m excited about the opportunities to shape a more innovative, effective, and user-centered future for SIEM. The journey has only just begun.
VP of Product Management
