Understanding Your License Model

SIEM license models can vary significantly. Some are simply based on the average ingested data per day, while others can have multiple factors such as ingested data per day, amount of end users, and the amount of devices it collects data from. Regardless of the license model, it’s critical to understand how it works to ensure you don’t under-allocate sufficient funds for it. A misunderstanding of your license model can unexpectedly consume more security budget than anticipated, and thus increase risk to your organization by limiting resources available for both the SIEM and other security services.

Additionally, as most companies are constantly growing and changing, it’s pivotal to understand how the license model can be augmented, changed, and what the penalties are for any violations.

While the simpler the license model the better, there’s nothing wrong with a license model with various factors as long as it’s well understood and meets your organization’s requirements. After a requirements gathering exercise, you should be able to tell your vendor the expected ingestion rates per day, how many users there will be, and the expected growth rates.

There are other less-obvious factors that can also significantly affect license models. Two often overlooked factors are how the vendor charges for filtering/dropping unneeded data, and if the ingested data rates are based on raw or aggregated/coalesced amounts. For example, if you’re planning on dropping a significant amount of data by the Processing Layer, Product A (which doesn’t charge for dropped data) would have lower license costs than Product B (which can drop data, but includes the dropped amount in license costs), all else equal. Product C, which aggregates/coalesces data and determines license costs based on the aggregated/coalesced EPS, would have lower license costs than Product D, which aggregates/coalesces data but determines license costs based on raw EPS rates, all else equal.

If you’re comparing different SIEMs, you should ensure that you’re performing an accurate comparison, as SIEMs can vary significantly. A license model for a full SIEM solution from Company A is likely to be more expensive than a log management-only solution from Company B.

SIEMs can be expensive and consume a significant portion of your security budget. Misunderstanding your requirements and then signing a contract with a license model that’s unclear or difficult to understand is a major risk. Reduce that risk by spending the resources necessary to understand it and choose one that aligns best with your organization.