10 Questions Smart SOC Leaders Ask Before Choosing a Cloud SIEM

Cloud security information and event management (SIEM) platforms promise better scale, flexibility, and visibility. But not all of them deliver. If you’re evaluating vendors, it’s not enough to ask about ingestion or pricing. You need to know whether the solution helps your team detect threats faster, reduce alert fatigue, and continuously improve use case coverage.

In this article, we walk through 10 critical questions that smart security operations center (SOC) leaders ask before choosing a cloud SIEM—questions that uncover whether a platform delivers real outcomes or just more infrastructure to manage. We’ll also show how the Exabeam New-Scale Security Operations Platform—and its built-in Outcomes Navigator app—helps answer these questions with clarity and precision.

1. Where is the Solution Delivered From and Where Is My Data Stored?

New-Scale SIEM is delivered as a cloud-native solution hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Customers can select their deployment location from a growing list of supported global data centers.

Each tenant’s data is isolated to ensure privacy. Exabeam leverages GCP’s resilient infrastructure while ensuring customers retain full control over where their data is stored.

With the Outcomes Navigator app, you gain an additional layer of visibility, mapping how your ingested data sources contribute to threat detection, coverage of critical use cases, and alignment with frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK^®.

2. How Is My Data Protected?

All log data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Ingestion happens over secure channels (TLS, SSL, encrypted API connections), and data is uploaded through a hardened pipeline to the cloud-delivered New-Scale Security Operations Platform.

Exabeam is SOC 2 Type II certified and continuously tests and audits platform security. Each customer’s environment is logically isolated with strict access controls.

3. Does the Solution Provide the Scaling and Ease-of-Management Benefits of a True SaaS Model?

Yes. The New-Scale Platform auto-scales compute and storage to match usage patterns, whether from short-term spikes or sustained growth. With over 9,500 prebuilt parsers and integration with more than 650 security tools, Exabeam simplifies onboarding and delivers real-time search performance across high-volume data.

Outcomes Navigator complements this by helping you understand which log sources deliver real detection value, so you scale with purpose and precision.

4. How Is My Data Collected and Transported to the SIEM?

Data is collected using Collectors and transported securely using compression, encryption, and batching.

• Site Collectors ingest and forward logs from on-premises sources.
• Cloud Collectors handle integrations with SaaS platforms and cloud infrastructure.
• Context Collectors enrich data with identity, threat intelligence, and asset context.

Outcomes Navigator leverages this rich context to evaluate your use case coverage, identify gaps, and recommend the log types that improve detection fidelity.

5. What Is the Expected Impact on Network or Internet Links?

Collectors are designed to minimize network impact through compression, local buffering, and efficient data forwarding. Traffic is routed over approved protocols with built-in resilience to network congestion.

With Outcomes Navigator, teams can evaluate whether the logs sent across constrained links contribute to meaningful outcomes, supporting smarter ingestion decisions.

6. How Do You Balance the Cadence of Feature and Function Upgrades With Adequate Testing to Ensure Availability and Quality?

The New-Scale Platform follows a continuous integration and deployment model with automated rollouts. Quality is maintained through:

• Early access programs and customer beta groups
• Secure code development training and enforcement
• Static code analysis and internal/external penetration testing

Recent innovations, including Exabeam Nova, Automation Management, and Threat Center, are delivered seamlessly, helping SOCs work faster and more strategically.

7. How Do You Support Security Technologies That are Part of Your Platform?

The New-Scale Platform unifies SIEM, user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR), and AI-driven assistance into a single cloud-native experience.

With Exabeam Nova, analysts receive AI-generated threat timelines, classification, and recommended next steps. Threat Center centralizes alerts, cases, timelines, and automation in a single investigative workbench.

And Outcomes Navigator lets you map ingested data sources to security outcomes, showing which logs help detect insider threats, compromised credentials, lateral movement, and more. You can even identify missing content or misaligned log sources based on your intended use cases and the ATT&CK framework.

8. Is the Licensing and Pricing Model Consumption Based?

Yes. Licensing is based on ingested data volume and the platform is designed to scale efficiently with growing detection requirements.

Outcomes Navigator helps optimize this model by identifying which logs contribute to successful detections and compliance reporting, so you can cut waste and focus your budget on high-value sources.

You also gain visibility into usage through Service Health and Consumption dashboards, which track performance, ingestion spikes, and licensing thresholds.

9. How Do You Ensure Availability of Your SIEM Solution?

Built on GCP with a 99.5% service level agreement (SLA), the New-Scale Platform delivers high availability through geographically distributed infrastructure, application-level resiliency, and 24/7 global monitoring by the Exabeam Cloud Operations team.

Threat Center ensures centralized visibility even during high-load events, while Automation Management keeps response workflows running smoothly regardless of ingestion volume or case load.

10. What Happens at the End of the Agreement?

Your data remains yours. Customers can access all log data collected during the contract term and can export it within a 30-day grace period after the agreement ends. Exabeam Professional Services support is available to assist with any offboarding or migration needs.

Conclusion

Modern SIEM isn’t just about collecting logs; it’s about making your data work for you. The New-Scale Platform, along with its built-in Outcomes Navigator app, brings that clarity by aligning log ingestion to real detection value and measurable outcomes.

Want to see where your gaps are—and what to do about them?

• Read the Outcomes Navigator feature brief
• Get the checklist: 10 SIEM Questions Outcomes Navigator Helps You Answer
• Watch the demo: Exabeam Nova in Outcomes Navigator