{"id":344,"date":"2025-10-06T13:14:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T13:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/?p=344"},"modified":"2025-10-06T13:14:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T13:14:38","slug":"taming-the-21000-alert-siem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/taming-the-21000-alert-siem\/","title":{"rendered":"Case Study : Taming the 21,000-Alert-a-Day SIEM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udea8 The Problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The client\u2019s SOC was drowning in noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their Splunk Enterprise Security environment was generating over <strong>21,000 notable events every single day<\/strong>. Analysts were overwhelmed, alert fatigue had set in, and confidence in the platform was fading fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udd0d My Role<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I was brought in as a specialist consultant to run a <strong>full health check<\/strong> of their detection environment and <strong>design a recovery path<\/strong> that actually stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2705 What I Did<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1. <strong>Full Detection Health Check<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Analysed detection rules, notable volumes, data sources, and KPIs<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Audited CIM and data model acceleration<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Identified root causes of alert bloat and duplication<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2. <strong>Prioritised Fixes<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Delivered quick wins (rule tuning, macro simplification)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Proposed a phased roadmap that worked for both SOC and engineering teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">3. <strong>CIM &amp; Data Model Repairs<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Normalised key log sources<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Improved CIM compliance<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Fixed broken acceleration and tagging to boost correlation speed and accuracy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">4. <strong>Detection Overhaul<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Re-wrote <strong>220+ correlation rules<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Removed duplication, added severity logic, restructured macros<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Reduced ES search time by over 60%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udcc9 The Results<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Alert volume dropped by 99%<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>False positives significantly reduced<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Analysts re-engaged with detection workflows<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Detection engineering became maintainable again<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Stakeholders finally trusted the data<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udd27 Tools &amp; Tactics Used<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Splunk ES \u00b7 CIM \u00b7 Data Models \u00b7 Custom Macros \u00b7 Detection Frameworks \u00b7 Stakeholder Workshops<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83e\udd1d Want Results Like This?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>If your detection pipeline is out of control \u2014 or if your team is burned out on bad alerts \u2014 I can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\ud83d\udcec <a href=\"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/contact\/\" title=\"Contact\">Get in touch<\/a> \u2014 or explore more of my work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How I helped restore clarity and control to a chaotic Splunk ES environment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"iawp_total_views":20,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[29,32,30,33,31],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-study","tag-alert-fatigue","tag-case-study","tag-detection-engineering","tag-log-normalisation","tag-splunk-es"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349,"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logsmith.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}