SIEM Logging

Purpose

Configure comprehensive security logging infrastructure using SIEM platforms (Elastic SIEM, Microsoft Sentinel, Wazuh, Splunk) to detect threats, investigate incidents, and maintain compliance audit trails. This skill covers platform selection, log aggregation architecture, detection rule development (SIGMA format and platform-specific), alert tuning, and retention policies for regulatory compliance (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2).

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• Implementing centralized security event monitoring across infrastructure
• Writing threat detection rules for authentication failures, privilege escalation, data exfiltration
• Designing log aggregation for multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes)
• Meeting compliance requirements for log retention and audit trails
• Tuning security alerts to reduce false positives and alert fatigue
• Calculating costs for high-volume security logging (TB/day scale)
• Integrating security logging with incident response workflows

SIEM Platform Selection

Quick Decision Framework

Choose SIEM platform based on:

Budget Considerations:

• Unlimited budget → Splunk Enterprise Security (enterprise features, proven scale)
• Moderate budget ($50k-$500k/year) → Microsoft Sentinel or Elastic SIEM (cloud-native, flexible)
• Tight budget (<$50k/year) → Wazuh (free, open-source XDR/SIEM)

Infrastructure Context:

• Heavy Azure investment → Microsoft Sentinel (native integration, built-in SOAR)
• Heavy AWS investment → AWS Security Lake + OpenSearch (AWS-native)
• Multi-cloud or on-premise → Elastic SIEM or Wazuh (platform-agnostic)

Data Volume:

• >1 TB/day → Splunk or Elastic Cloud (proven at scale)
• 100 GB - 1 TB/day → Microsoft Sentinel or Elastic SIEM
• <100 GB/day → Wazuh or Sentinel 50 GB tier