Less noise. More signal. Detections that actually fire.
SIEM tuning, detection engineering, and custom content for your environment. Splunk, Sentinel, Elastic, Sumo Logic, Chronicle, and others. Built around MITRE ATT&CK so your coverage gaps are visible and your priorities are defensible.
Your SIEM is generating alerts, not detections
Most SIEM deployments ship with default content that was written to work across a generic environment. In your environment, that means thousands of low-fidelity alerts that fire on normal behavior, and almost no high-fidelity detections tuned to your actual attack surface. The result is a queue your analyst team stops trusting, a platform that costs six figures per year in licensing, and real threats that move through the environment without triggering anything useful.
The difference between a SIEM used as a log collector and one used as a detection platform is not the product. It is the content and the tuning. A log collector ingests your data and stores it. A detection platform has use cases written for your environment, suppression rules that cut false positives to a manageable level, and a documented coverage map that shows what you can detect and where you are blind. That gap is what we close.
Signs you need this
- Your SOC or IT team has disabled or muted alerts because the volume was unmanageable
- You cannot tell a board member which MITRE ATT&CK techniques you can detect today
- Your SIEM bill keeps rising but the number of actionable alerts is not growing with it
- You brought in a new log source and no one has written detections against it
- You bought Splunk or Sentinel 18 months ago and you are still running mostly out-of-the-box content
- You had an incident and your SIEM had the data but no alert fired during the intrusion
What you get
Every engagement starts with understanding what you have and what you are missing. The output is a detection library, a tuned alert stack, and documentation your team can operate and extend. All content is written in your native query language and stays in your environment.
Detection inventory and ATT&CK coverage map
- Audit of all current detection content: what is enabled, what is muted, what is broken
- MITRE ATT&CK heat map showing covered, partially covered, and uncovered techniques
- Prioritized gap list based on your environment and threat profile
Custom detection content
- New use cases written in your SIEM's native language (SPL, KQL, ESQL, or equivalent)
- Mapped to specific ATT&CK techniques so coverage is trackable over time
- Tested against real or simulated data before promotion to production
Alert tuning and log source strategy
- Suppression rules and thresholds that reduce false positives without masking real threats
- Log source onboarding plan: what to ingest, what to skip, and why
- Cost optimization review to identify high-volume, low-value ingest that is inflating your license
Documentation and runbooks
- Detection-level documentation: what each use case detects, why it matters, and what to do when it fires
- Triage runbooks your analyst team can follow without escalating to a senior engineer every time
- Content management process so new detections do not get deployed and forgotten
How the engagement works
Standard engagements run 4 to 8 weeks depending on SIEM maturity, number of log sources, and the size of the detection gap. Multi-environment engagements — including post-M&A SIEM consolidation work — run longer. We scope based on what we find in the initial inventory, not on a fixed-fee assumption.
Engagement structure
- Phase 1 (weeks 1-2): discovery, inventory, and ATT&CK coverage baseline
- Phase 2 (weeks 2-6): detection content development, tuning, and testing
- Phase 3 (weeks 6-8): documentation, runbook handoff, and analyst walkthrough
- Ongoing: optional retainer for new use case development as your environment evolves
What we ask of you
- Read access to your SIEM environment and current detection content
- A named contact on your security or IT team who can answer environment questions
- Access to a non-production environment for detection testing where possible
- Willingness to disable or archive content that is not working, even if it is vendor-provided
Why Red Hound for detection engineering
We have built detection content for Fortune 500 SOCs. We know what an alert looks like from the analyst's chair at 3 AM, and we write content that gives a tired analyst enough context to make a triage decision in two minutes. Generic detection libraries do not do that. Custom content written for your environment does.
What makes us different
- Fortune 500 SOC depth. We have written detection content for large-scale SOC environments with high alert volumes. We know what survives at scale and what drowns the queue.
- Attacker perspective. Our offensive background means we write detections around how attackers actually operate, not around what the vendor documentation suggests.
- ATT&CK-grounded coverage. Every detection maps to a specific technique. Coverage gaps are visible on a heat map, not buried in a spreadsheet.
- Content you keep. Everything we write is yours. No proprietary formats, no dependency on our platform. You own the detections we build.
- Cost-aware tuning. We know SIEM licensing well enough to identify ingest that is costing you money without improving your detection posture.
Frequently asked
Common questions from security and IT teams before starting a SIEM optimization engagement.
Which SIEMs do you support?
Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Elastic SIEM, Sumo Logic, and Google Chronicle are the most common. We also support IBM QRadar and LogRhythm. If you are running a less common platform, ask on the discovery call and we will tell you honestly whether we have the depth to be useful.
Do we need a SIEM already in place to start?
The detection engineering engagement assumes a deployed SIEM with log sources already onboarded. If you are evaluating SIEMs or standing one up from scratch, we can help with platform selection and initial architecture before moving to content development. Those are separate scopes.
What about EDR and XDR platforms?
EDR and XDR platforms have their own detection content and alert pipelines. We can tune EDR alert policies and build SIEM use cases that correlate EDR telemetry with other log sources to catch what the EDR misses on its own. We do not replace EDR vendors; we make better use of the data they produce.
Can you reduce our SIEM bill without breaking detections?
Yes. SIEM cost optimization is a standard part of the engagement. We look at ingest volume by source, identify sources that contribute to cost but not to any detection use case, and recommend what to drop, filter, or route to cheaper storage. Most environments have at least one high-volume source that is paying the bill without earning its keep.
Do we keep the detection content you write?
Yes. All detection content is delivered in your native query language and loaded directly into your SIEM. There is no proprietary wrapper, no external dependency, and no ongoing license from us to use what we built. The content is yours to operate, modify, and extend.
Get a SIEM that does what you bought it for.
A 30-minute discovery call, no obligation. We talk through your current SIEM environment and tell you what it would take to get to a detection platform you can actually trust.