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Exabeam: AI-Driven SIEM and User Behavior Analytics (UEBA)

Exabeam provides a cloud-native New-Scale SIEM and UEBA platform that helps SOC teams detect, investigate, and respond to cyberthreats using behavioral analytics.

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Overview

Exabeam is a global cybersecurity leader that provides a cloud-native platform for security operations (SecOps). Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Foster City, California, the company rose to prominence by pioneering the User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) category. Today, Exabeam offers a comprehensive portfolio known as the "New-Scale SIEM," which integrates log management, behavioral analytics, and automated incident response into a unified workflow.

The company's primary focus is helping organizations overcome the limitations of legacy Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, which often struggle with the scale of modern data and the sophistication of identity-based attacks. Exabeam serves a broad range of industries, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and government agencies, targeting mid-to-large enterprises with complex security environments.

Over its history, Exabeam has evolved from a niche analytics overlay to a full-scale security operations platform. Their market presence is bolstered by a strong cloud-first strategy, delivering high-performance data ingestion and lightning-fast search capabilities. By automating the most tedious parts of an analyst's job—such as data normalization and timeline creation—Exabeam enables Security Operations Centers (SOCs) to stay ahead of threats like ransomware, data exfiltration, and compromised insiders. Following its recent merger with LogRhythm, Exabeam has further solidified its position as one of the largest independent security operations entities in the market.

Positioning

Exabeam positions itself as the modern alternative to "legacy" SIEM providers like Splunk or IBM QRadar. Their strategic messaging centers on the concept of "New-Scale SIEM," emphasizing that modern security challenges require a combination of massive scale, high-speed search, and intelligent analytics. They position themselves as a "force multiplier" for overworked SOC teams, promising to turn junior analysts into experts through automated insights.

In the competitive landscape, Exabeam differentiates by focusing on "Security Outcomes" rather than just "Data Management." While competitors often compete on the ability to ingest data, Exabeam competes on the ability to understand that data. Their branding is built around the "Exabeam Security Operations Platform," which is marketed as a modular yet integrated solution that can either replace an existing SIEM or sit on top of one to provide an advanced analytics layer. This flexible positioning allows them to enter accounts as a specialized UEBA tool and eventually expand into the primary security record of truth for the organization.

Differentiation

The primary differentiator for Exabeam’s product suite is its advanced User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA). While many SIEMs claim to offer analytics, Exabeam’s platform automatically creates a "normal" baseline for every user and device on a network. It utilizes machine learning to assign risk scores to anomalies, allowing security analysts to bypass thousands of noisy alerts and focus on high-risk incidents.

A standout technical feature is "Smart Timelines." This capability automatically stitches together disparate security logs into a chronological narrative of an attack, including lateral movement and credential switching. This eliminates the manual, hours-long process of cross-referencing logs from different sources. Furthermore, their "New-Scale SIEM" architecture is built on a cloud-native data lake that provides hyper-fast search capabilities and affordable long-term storage, solving the performance bottlenecks common in legacy SIEM architectures. Their integration ecosystem is also a major advantage, featuring hundreds of pre-built connectors that ensure fast time-to-value across diverse tech stacks.

Ideal Customer Profile

The ideal Exabeam customer is a mid-to-large enterprise (1,000+ employees) with a dedicated security team.

  • Industry: Particularly strong in Finance, Healthcare, Retail, and Government sectors where data security and regulatory compliance are paramount.
  • Technical Maturity: Organizations that have moved beyond basic firewall/AV and are looking for advanced detection capabilities like UEBA.
  • Budget: Mid-to-high range; Exabeam is a premium solution focused on value through automation and reduced risk rather than being the lowest-cost log storage option.
  • Team: Best suited for SOCs that are overwhelmed by alerts and need 'Smart Timelines' to augment their analysts' capabilities.

Best Fit

Exabeam excels in environments where 'finding the needle in the haystack' is the primary challenge. It is the best fit for:

  1. Detection of Insider Threats: Organizations concerned about malicious insiders or compromised credentials where traditional rule-based SIEMs fail to detect subtle behavioral shifts.
  2. SOC Modernization: Teams looking to replace or augment legacy SIEMs with AI-driven automation to reduce 'alert fatigue' and speed up incident response.
  3. Complex Hybrid Environments: Enterprises operating across multi-cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) and on-premises infrastructure that require a unified 'timeline' view of user activity.
  4. Compliance-Heavy Industries: Organizations in finance, healthcare, or government that need automated, long-term log storage and rapid reporting for regulatory audits.

Offerings

Exabeam offers its capabilities through the New-Scale Platform, divided into specific functional modules:

  1. Exabeam Log Management: The foundation for high-scale ingestion, search, and long-term retention. Best for compliance and basic forensic search.
  2. Exabeam SIEM: Adds correlation rules, alerting, and incident management to the log management foundation.
  3. Exabeam Fusion: The flagship offering that combines SIEM with Advanced Analytics (UEBA). It is designed for complex threat detection and automated response.
  4. Exabeam Security Analytics: A standalone analytics layer that can sit on top of other SIEMs (like Splunk) to provide UEBA capabilities without replacing the existing log repository.
  5. Exabeam Case Management & SOAR: Tools for automating the lifecycle of an incident, from ticket creation to automated remediation actions.

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Buying Guide: Exabeam

Everything you need to evaluate Exabeam— from features and pricing to implementation and security.

Introduction

Choosing a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) or Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platform is a critical decision for any modern enterprise. Exabeam has established itself as a leader in the space by pivoting from a traditional log management tool to an AI-driven Security Operations platform. This guide evaluates Exabeam’s "New-Scale" architecture, which focuses on cloud-native scale, behavioral analytics, and automated incident response.

In this guide, you will learn about Exabeam's unique approach to User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), how its timeline-based investigation can drastically reduce Mean Time to Respond (MTTR), and the technical requirements necessary to move from a legacy SIEM to a modern, analytics-led SOC. Whether you are battling alert fatigue or seeking to detect sophisticated lateral movement, this document provides the framework for evaluating Exabeam against your organizational needs.

Key Features

Exabeam’s value proposition is centered on its 'New-Scale' security operations capabilities:

  • Advanced Analytics & UEBA: Automatically creates baselines for every user and device. It assigns risk scores based on deviations from normal behavior, allowing analysts to focus on high-risk anomalies rather than thousands of low-fidelity alerts.
  • Smart Timelines: Automatically stitches together disparate logs (VPN login -> file access -> cloud upload) into a chronological narrative. This eliminates the manual work of searching for related events across different systems.
  • Cloud-Native Log Management: A highly scalable, high-ingest platform that allows for rapid search across petabytes of data with sub-second latency, meeting both performance and compliance needs.
  • Automated TDIR (Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response): Pre-packaged use case content (e.g., Ransomware, Phishing, Data Leakage) that includes detection rules, models, and automated playbooks.
  • Out-of-the-Box Compliance: Automated reporting for frameworks like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOX, and GDPR, leveraging long-term searchable data storage.
  • ServiceNow & ITSM Integration: Seamlessly pushes prioritized incidents into existing IT workflows for faster remediation.

Use Cases

  • Compromised Credential Detection: A global retailer used Exabeam to detect an attacker using valid credentials. Because the attacker logged in from an unusual IP and accessed a database they never touched before, Exabeam’s risk scoring alerted the SOC immediately, despite the 'valid' login.
  • Insider Threat Mitigation: A financial services firm utilized UEBA to monitor employees in notice periods. The system flagged a user who began downloading unusual volumes of sensitive data to a personal cloud storage account, which was automatically blocked via a SOAR playbook.
  • Rapid Incident Investigation: During a malware outbreak, a healthcare provider used Smart Timelines to reconstruct the entire attack path in minutes—from the initial phishing email to lateral movement—a process that previously took their team hours of manual log correlation.
  • Log Centralization & Compliance: A manufacturing company replaced multiple siloed log tools with Exabeam to centralize logs for 40+ global sites, achieving PCI-DSS compliance and reducing audit preparation time by 70%.

Pricing Models

Exabeam transitioned to a more predictable pricing model with its New-Scale launch:

  • Volume-Based (Ingestion): Pricing is primarily driven by the amount of data ingested per day (GB/day).
  • User-Based (Analytics): For certain UEBA components, pricing may be calculated based on the number of monitored entities (users/devices).
  • Tiered Packages: Offerings are typically bundled into tiers:
    • Search & Archive: For cost-effective log management and compliance.
    • Detect & Prioritize: Adds behavioral analytics and risk scoring.
    • Observe & Respond: The full suite including SOAR capabilities.
  • Additional Costs: Consider costs for professional services (implementation), premium support, and specialized training through Exabeam University. Pro-tip: Negotiate for 'burst' capacity to handle seasonal spikes in log volume.

Technical Requirements

Exabeam is primarily a SaaS-based platform, but requires some infrastructure for data collection:

  • Data Collection: Exabeam Site Collectors require Windows Server 2016+ or Linux (RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu) with minimum 4 vCPUs and 16GB RAM.
  • Network: Outbound HTTPS (Port 443) access to Exabeam’s cloud environment. High-speed internet is required for high-volume log ingestion.
  • Browser: Modern versions of Chrome, Firefox, or Edge.
  • Identity: Integration with an Identity Provider (IdP) for SSO is highly recommended.
  • Log Sources: Must be able to export logs via Syslog, API, or direct database connection. Compatibility with Exabeam’s Common Information Model (CIM) is essential for analytics.

Business Requirements

To successfully adopt Exabeam, organizations should meet the following prerequisites:

  • Security Maturity: A dedicated Security Operations Center (SOC) or at least a small team of specialized security analysts is necessary to act on the insights provided.
  • Data Strategy: A clear understanding of your data sources (logs, cloud events, endpoint data) is required to ensure the right telemetry is ingested for behavioral modeling.
  • Change Management: Readiness to move away from purely rule-based detection to a behavioral-based 'risk scoring' model, which requires adjusting how analysts prioritize their daily workflow.
  • Executive Buy-in: Support for a multi-month deployment and tuning phase where the AI 'learns' the baseline behavior of the environment.
  • Training: Commitment to enrolling analysts in Exabeam University or formal certifications to master the 'Smart Timelines' and advanced search functionalities.

Implementation Timeline

A typical Exabeam New-Scale implementation follows this trajectory:

  • Phase 1: Discovery & Planning (Weeks 1-2): Identifying log sources, defining use cases, and establishing network connectivity/firewall rules.
  • Phase 2: Data Ingestion & Normalization (Weeks 3-6): Configuring Site Collectors, integrating cloud-to-cloud connectors, and validating that logs are being correctly parsed into the Common Information Model (CIM).
  • Phase 3: Behavioral Baseline (Weeks 7-10): The platform’s Advanced Analytics engine begins modeling user and entity behavior. This period is critical for the AI to establish 'normal' patterns.
  • Phase 4: Triage & Workflow Integration (Weeks 11-14): Integrating with ticketing systems (e.g., ServiceNow) and SOAR playbooks. Analyst training occurs during this phase.
  • Phase 5: Go-Live & Optimization (Week 15+): Full production use with ongoing tuning of risk scores and detection rules.

Support Options

Exabeam offers three primary tiers of support:

  1. Standard Support: Business-hour access to technical support engineers and access to the online knowledge base and community.
  2. Premium Support: 24/7 support for P1 issues with faster response time SLAs (typically 1 hour for critical issues).
  3. Enterprise Support: Includes a designated Technical Account Manager (TAM) and quarterly business reviews to optimize platform performance.
  • Professional Services: Available for initial deployment, architectural design, and custom parser development.
  • Exabeam University: A robust learning management system with on-demand and instructor-led training for analysts and administrators.

Integration Requirements

Exabeam is built on an open architecture designed for deep integration:

  • Cloud Connectors: 500+ pre-built connectors for SaaS and IaaS providers (O365, Salesforce, AWS CloudTrail, etc.).
  • Exabeam Site Collector: A lightweight software agent for gathering logs from on-premises Windows/Linux servers and Syslog streams.
  • APIs: Robust RESTful APIs for programmatic data ingestion, exporting alerts to third-party tools, and automating administrative tasks.
  • SOAR Integration: Bi-directional integration with major SOAR platforms (Palo Alto Cortex XSOAR, Splunk Phantom) and their own native TDIR (Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response) workflows.
  • Data Formats: Support for JSON, Syslog, CEF, LEEF, and flat files. All data is normalized into a consistent schema for cross-source correlation.

Security & Compliance

Exabeam maintains high standards for internal and product security:

  • Certifications: SOC2 Type II, ISO 27001, and HIPAA compliance readiness.
  • Data Residency: Multiple global data centers (AWS-based) to ensure compliance with local data sovereignty laws (GDPR, CCPA).
  • Encryption: Data is encrypted both at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+).
  • Access Control: Robust Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and support for Single Sign-On (SSO) via SAML 2.0 (Okta, Azure AD).
  • Audit Logging: Comprehensive platform audit logs to track who accessed which data and when.

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