Why SIEM alone isn’t enough: The rise of XSIAM

For more than a decade, SIEM platforms have been the backbone of Security Operations Centres (SOCs). They centralised logs, enabled detections, and helped teams meet compliance requirements. But 2025 looks very different to 2015. Threat actors are automated and fast; identities and SaaS apps (business cloud applications) sprawl across clouds; telemetry volumes are exploding; and skilled analysts are in short supply.

In this landscape, log management, alerting and incident response aren’t enough. Security teams need outcomes: fewer false positives, faster investigations, and automated containment. Without a modernisation of the SIEM, SOCs will become inundated with manual labour, missing crucial investigations.

RightSec has seen a shift in large cyber security vendors, developing platforms that are more than just a SIEM. We have modernised our internal SOC to follow this approach, and want to share the benefits RightSec’s managed SOC service is providing to our clients.

We have built capabilities on the Palo Alto Networks Extended Security Intelligence & Automation Management (XSIAM) platform, and have seen organisations modernising away from a SIEM-only mindset.

What’s breaking in the SIEM-only model?

Traditional SIEMs excel at collecting and correlating logs, but investigations still hinge on manual enrichment and pivoting across tools. Analysts spend more time stitching data than stopping threats.
Ingestion-based licensing can force hard choices about what to collect. Teams often drop valuable telemetry to manage budgets, reducing detection quality just when attackers are getting noisier.
Endpoints, identity, email, network, cloud, SaaS (e.g., Salesforce, Snowflake); each domain tells part of the story. In SIEM-centric stacks, these signals are fragmented, so high-fidelity detections are rare, and response is slow.
There is a separation of the EDR, SIEM, and SOAR platforms. The lack of interconnectivity greatly reduces the ability to automate across the tech stack, and increases detection times.
Even with SOAR playbooks, a SIEM-led workflow typically routes every decision through an analyst. That bottleneck drives alert fatigue and inconsistent outcomes.

What XSIAM brings to the table

Think of XSIAM as a SOC operating system; unifying data, analytics, and automated response in one platform:

Endpoint, cloud, identity, network, and SaaS data are ingested in a normalised data plane designed for detection science and rapid investigations.
Behavioural analytics, UEBA, and advanced correlation enrich events automatically and surface incidents rather than raw alerts. As a result, analysts start closer to the answer.
Auto-triage, enrichment, and containment reduce manual toil. Analysts focus on decisions that truly require human judgment.
The whole kill chain is visible in one place. From external attack surface (exposed assets and misconfigurations) through lateral movement to identity abuse.
Integrations, correlations, detection rules, cases management, playbooks, and evidence all live in the same ecosystem, accelerating both mean time to acknowledge (MTTA) and mean time to resolve (MTTR).

Why does the current landscape demand this shift?

Attackers are increasingly leveraging AI and automation in more ways than we can imagine. From large-scale automated discovery and phishing campaigns to sophisticated post-exploitation techniques, adversaries are moving at machine speed. Security teams cannot afford to rely on manual processes alone. They must match this pace with machine-driven triage and automated response if they are to stay ahead.

Compromised accounts and abused permissions continue to be at the core of most incidents, making identity one of the most critical areas to secure. This is why XSIAM’s identity-aware detections and controls are no longer optional, they are fundamental for uncovering subtle anomalies and shutting down attacks before they escalate.

At the same time, the rapid adoption of cloud platforms and SaaS applications means that every new service introduces a fresh stream of telemetry. Without unified visibility, organisations are blind to large parts of their attack surface, and without correlation across data sources, investigations grind to a halt.

The only sustainable path forward is to reduce analyst fatigue and amplify their impact. By improving signal quality and embracing automation, security teams can cut through the noise, focus on what matters, and deliver meaningful outcomes at scale.

The RightSec approach to Cortex XSIAM

RightSec specialises in designing, operating, and continually optimising Cortex XSIAM environments for Australian organisations. We combine platform expertise with 24/7 services to deliver outcomes, not just tools.

RightSec is a Select Cortex XSIAM partner, and currently holds the highest level of certification within the Cortex platform, than any other Australian based consultancy.

What we bring:

24/7 MDR on XSIAM: Always-on monitoring, investigation, and response using XSIAM’s native case management, automation, and telemetry.
Continuous improvement: RightSec will build upon your dedicated instance of XSIAM, improving on playbooks, correlation rules, and configurations. This is core to our service, and does not result in any additional costs.
Incident Response retainer: Our IR team engages quickly, using playbooks and containment actions already built into your XSIAM tenant. RightSec’s retainer also extends beyond platform-detected events to cover any cyber security incident your organisation identifies by other means.
Migration & consolidation: We’ve guided clients migrating from legacy SIEM and point tools onto XSIAM. As SIEMs are so ingrained into an organisations operations, it can be quite daunting to plan a migration. RightSec’s approach to professional services will result in a smooth transition, immediate realisation on platform benefits, and an overall simplification of operations.
Detection engineering & tuning: We adapt detections to your environment and risk profile, then iterate based on evidence, closing the loop between operations and detection science.
Client-friendly visibility: Our internally developed managed SOC portal streamlines automations and metrics, allowing you to view operational health in real time and reach out to the RightSec team directly.

Real-world scenarios we see across our clients

Business-hours SOC to 24/7 coverage
An organisation with limited after-hours visibility moved to RightSec’s SOC, powered by XSIAM. Automated triage handled the night-time noise; analysts focused on the handful of high-fidelity incidents that mattered when staff returned. As this organisation did not have a 24/7 service desk, RightSec built playbooks and integrations that would enable remediations to be performed across their entire technology stack, removing the need for client input, for events the client was not specifically needed for.
Identity abuse, faster to truth
After enabling identity-aware detections and playbooks, one customer’s “suspected login anomalies” events were resolved in minutes, not hours, thanks to automatic enrichment (impossible travel, device reputation, historical baselines) and step-up response actions.
RightSec developed a playbook to automatically email the suspected user’s manager when an event was detected that may be the user travelling to that destination. This reduced a significant overhead that was placed on the internal service desk.
Tool consolidation
An organisation with a hybrid environment, utilised several siloed technologies with overlapping functionalities. XSIAM was able to consolidate the client’s EDR, SIEM, SOAR, ASM, asset inventory, and vulnerability management platforms, into one unified platform.

Metrics that matter in an XSIAM world

If you only tracked six KPIs, make them these:

Signal quality: Ratio of incidents to raw alerts; percentage of auto-closed noise. High signal quality means analysts spend time on real problems.
Time to decision: MTTA/MTTR are core metrics to determine the efficacy of an operation. How quickly can an analyst say something is “benign” or “malicious” with evidence? RightSec’s average MTTR (mean-time-to-resolve) over a one-month period, across all of our clients, is 8-minutes.
Automation coverage: What proportion of triage steps and containment actions execute without human hands? Track this by use-case and grow it safely over time.
Framework Alignment Coverage: Percentage of XSIAM detections, playbooks, integrations, and reports mapped to operational security and resilience requirements from ISO 27001 and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. High alignment demonstrates that SOC outcomes directly support recognised governance standards.
Audit Readiness Index: Proportion of incidents and responses automatically documented with evidence chains suitable for regulatory or internal audits. Strong audit readiness means reduced manual reporting effort and faster assurance cycles.
Policy-to-Detection Traceability: Ratio of organisational security policies that have a corresponding, enforced detection or automated control in XSIAM. Higher traceability proves governance requirements are operationalised, not just written.

Getting from SIEM to XSIAM without the headache

Migrating from a legacy SIEM to XSIAM doesn’t have to be a disruptive project. The smoothest path begins with discovery: understanding your current telemetry, identifying pain points, and aligning on the compliance drivers and outcome-based KPIs that will define success. From there, organisations can start sending high-value data into XSIAM in parallel while keeping their existing SIEM as the system of record, ensuring visibility is expanded without risking operational disruption.

Once the foundation is in place, investigations for priority detections can gradually be shifted to XSIAM, with lower-risk cases left in the SIEM until confidence grows. Automation can then be introduced in stages, beginning with enrichment and ticketing to reduce manual toil, before extending into containment actions such as isolation and quarantine.

Over time, as results are validated and KPIs demonstrate value, redundant tools and SIEM content can be retired in a controlled and evidence-driven manner. Throughout this process, RightSec provides runbooks, change control, and executive-ready reporting to make sure stakeholders remain confident and risk stays contained.

The real power of XSIAM, however, is unlocked when advanced platform capabilities are paired with operational expertise. That is why choosing a specialist partner matters. RightSec combines deep knowledge of Cortex XSIAM and its integrations across endpoints, cloud, and identity with the operational muscle of 24/7 managed detection and response and incident response. We design solutions that fit the realities of each client and then drive continuous improvement through regular tuning and posture reviews. Technology on its own cannot solve all problems. It takes a well-run XSIAM program, supported by the right partner, to deliver the outcomes that modern SOCs demand.

Conclusion

SIEMs are not obsolete, but they are outdated. A SIEM alone is no longer sufficient to meet the current threat landscape. In 2025, effective security operations demand unified telemetry, high-fidelity analytics, and automation that actually moves the needle on risk. That’s exactly what XSIAM delivers.

If you’re ready to modernise your SOC, RightSec can help you design the journey, operate 24/7 on Cortex XSIAM, and demonstrate measurable outcomes to your organisation.

RightSec is happy to provide free consultations on how to modernise your organisations approach to security operations.