From SIEM to MXDR: Why Midmarket Companies Need More Than Just a SIEM

Let’s be honest: the threat landscape is intense, and many mid market companies rely on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) to keep things in check. SIEM is incredibly valuable for capturing logs, spotting odd activities, and giving IT teams a sense of control. But the truth is, SIEM alone isn’t always enough. Today’s attacks are getting more complex, and a SIEM system on its own can end up generating too many alerts and not enough insights. That’s why more companies are adding Extended Detection and Response (XDR) to create a Managed Extended Detection and Response (MXDR) strategy.

At Avertium, we see MXDR as the future of managed security – a service that enhances your security capabilities without replacing essential elements. Just as XDR isn’t about replacing SIEM but extending it, MXDR is about elevating your existing team’s effectiveness. By combining SIEM’s foundational monitoring with XDR’s advanced threat detection, MXDR boosts alert accuracy, accelerates response times, and empowers your team to tackle evolving threats with confidence.

Why SIEM Alone Isn’t Cutting It

SIEM is still essential, and is deployed with every security strategy. But using SIEM as a standalone tool can leave gaps that make defending against today’s threats harder than it should be. Here are some of the challenges:  

• Evolving Threat Landscape: The speed and scale of attacks have escalated, making it impossible to set up alerts for every possible threat. Attackers continuously develop new tactics that can bypass traditional defenses, creating an urgent need for more adaptive security measures.

• Evolving Ways of Working: With the rise of a remote workforce and an expanding attack surface, organizations face increased vulnerabilities. This new landscape complicates the security monitoring process, as traditional SIEM tools may not effectively account for remote access points or cloud services.

• Integration Challenges: Many organizations struggle with integrating SIEM with other security tools. This lack of integration can lead to fragmented security efforts, making it harder to get a holistic view of security incidents.

• Reactive Nature of Traditional SIEMs: Traditional SIEMs primarily focus on detecting known threats based on predefined rules and signatures (IOCs). This reactive approach can leave them struggling to identify novel or sophisticated attacks that don’t match existing patterns, reducing their effectiveness against advanced persistent threats.

• Too Many Alerts, Too Little Context: SIEM generates a lot of alerts, and for many midmarket companies, that means wading through a sea of notifications – many of which are false alarms. In fact, nearly half, 45%, of all SIEM alerts are false positives, which can burn out IT and cyber teams and make it tough to focus on real threats.

• Manual Workload and Upkeep: SIEM systems demand regular manual tuning to remain effective. As businesses evolve, the SIEM must adapt too. Without this upkeep, SIEMs risk generating noise – alerting on benign activities – while potentially missing genuine threats.

• Need for Skilled Staff: SIEM requires people who know how to fine-tune it, analyze logs, and interpret the data. But with the global shortage of cybersecurity professionals, midmarket companies are often left without enough hands to make their SIEM work effectively.

All this to say – SIEM alone isn’t the problem; it’s that SIEM as a standalone solution has limits. That’s where XDR comes in.

Why Add XDR to Your Cybersecurity Strategy

An XDR strategy builds on SIEM by adding advanced detection and response capabilities across your environment, covering everything from endpoints and networks to cloud services. With the enormous volume of data generated across these systems, XDR plays a critical role in organizing and analyzing it to drive effective, targeted actions. 

XDR works by correlating data from multiple sources, providing a unified view that cuts through noise and identifies real threats faster. By applying intelligent analysis and automation, it translates raw data into actionable insights, enabling your security team to respond to threats with greater precision and speed. This means less time spent on sifting through logs and more time focused on meaningful, proactive defense measures.

Here’s what that means in practice:

• Fewer Alerts, More Insights: With automation and AI, XDR helps cut down on noise by filtering out irrelevant alerts and flagging only real threats. By correlating data across sources, , it not only detects sophisticated, multi-stage attacks but also minimizes false positives – focusing on quality over quantity. This ensures that alerts are relevant and worth your team’s attention, enabling faster, more effective responses.

• Faster Detection and Response: While traditional SIEM can take months to detect a breach, XDR can reduce that to just hours. By combining real-time monitoring with automated threat hunting, XDR makes it possible to catch and respond to threats faster.

• Better Context Across Your Systems: XDR enhances SIEM by integrating data from multiple sources – including endpoints, network traffic, email activity, cloud environments, and identity management systems – and adding SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) capabilities. This allows for automated responses to certain threats, enabling teams to remediate issues faster. With a user-friendly interface and seamless integration, XDR delivers deeper insights and a more effective, streamlined approach to threat detection and response.

XDR builds on the foundational benefits of SIEM by enhancing visibility, improving threat detection accuracy, automating response actions, and reducing the resource burden – making it a more effective solution for modern threat landscapes.

Related resource: Why You are Missing the Mark if You Think XDR is Only About Technology

Cost Efficiency and Flexibility – The Benefits of an MXDR Approach

Investing in a SIEM system is just the beginning – managing it in-house requires consistent attention, staffing, infrastructure, and frequent updates. This can be a heavy financial and operational lift for many midmarket companies. MXDR, as a managed service, shifts this burden, covering the management needs that come with SIEM, plus much more. By integrating and optimizing your SIEM with XDR capabilities, MXDR can help reduce redundant tools and streamline your tech stack.

Beyond just cost savings, MXDR provides flexibility. As new threats emerge, your MXDR platform evolves, adjusting to meet new security needs without you having to constantly revamp or upgrade your setup. For companies looking to balance robust security with cost efficiency, MXDR is a smart investment that stretches your budget further and gives your team more room to focus on your overall security strategy, not just threat response.

Making the Transition from SIEM to MXDR

Transitioning from SIEM to XDR doesn’t mean starting from scratch. In fact, XDR is designed to build on your existing SIEM and security tools, enhancing what’s already in place. However, implementing XDR isn’t a plug-and-play process; it requires careful integration, specialized expertise, and a tailored approach to ensure seamless functionality across all your systems.

At Avertium, we guide clients through each step of our MXDR process, from integrating XDR with existing SIEM logs and data sources to configuring user access controls and automated response protocols. This ensures that XDR not only works smoothly within your current setup but also minimizes false positives and aligns with your operational needs.

The transition process requires the right resources and expertise to unlock MXDR’s full potential – something that’s often challenging for internal teams to tackle alone. With a well-executed MXDR strategy, you’re not replacing SIEM but upgrading your defenses to gain deeper insights, streamline response, and better protect against evolving threats.

Related resource: Building an XDR Solution: Factors You Ought to Consider for ZTNA, EDR, Vulnerability Scanning and SIEM

Real-World Results with MXDR

For midmarket companies, adding MXDR to their cybersecurity strategy leads to transformative results. With faster incident response, better threat visibility, and overall cost savings, MXDR becomes a game-changer. This helps IT teams reduce burnout, stay ahead of attackers, and have a clear, actionable view of what’s happening across their systems.

The shift from SIEM to an MXDR approach isn’t just about technology – it’s about empowering your team with the insights and tools they need to protect your business effectively. For midmarket companies dealing with limited resources, MXDR brings together advanced security without the complexity, helping to close gaps that traditional SIEM can’t. With Avertium’s MXDR strategy, security becomes proactive, agile, and aligned to today’s threat landscape, ensuring you stay secure and resilient, no matter what comes next.

Our interconnected three-step approach – Assess, Design, and Protect – ensures transparency and collaboration, aligning with your organization's transition to MXDR and your overall cyber maturity journey. 

• Assess: We start by gaining a comprehensive view of your security and compliance controls, laying out a roadmap for future improvements.

• Design: Working closely with your team, we design a resilient, efficient security foundation that addresses any gaps and prepares you for growth.

• Protect: Avertium provides 24/7/365 support, with continuous monitoring, threat intelligence, and attack surface reduction to keep your environment secure.

Together, Avertium’s expertise provides a comprehensive security approach that grows with your business and adapts to new challenges. Let’s get started. Discover how Avertium can help your business stay one step ahead with MXDR.

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