How to select a SIEM solution

'SIEM' and 'SIM' are terms I first came across close to nine years ago when I was looking at setting up my company, earthwave - an MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider) that focuses on delivering real-time threat analysis and incident response services. Back then, the technology was in its infancy and there were no vendors with any local presence, so I was forced to spend three months in the U.S. evaluating products before investing my life savings into this technology.

At the time we were certainly an early adopter of what would have been version one of almost all of the six products we evaluated, of which only two remain 'pure play' vendors in that space, while others have been acquired by larger vendors.