Broader Detection. No Additional SIEM Cost.
- Jul 15
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 15
A global life sciences and pharmaceutical research organization had a mature security stack in place: SIEM, EDR, NGFW, and centralized monitoring, working as intended. More than 3,000 employees. A distributed global infrastructure across R&D, laboratory, and enterprise environments.
The gap wasn't in what the stack could see. It was in what expanding that visibility would cost to sustain.
Two Gaps, One Expensive Fix
Two detection gaps needed closing: reconnaissance and service discovery activity inside the internal network, and identity-focused attack techniques targeting Active Directory.
Both were solvable within the existing SIEM infrastructure. Neither was solvable at a justifiable cost.
Achieving the required visibility through conventional telemetry expansion meant collecting over 100 GB of additional data per day, writing and maintaining custom detection logic, and deploying canary assets across the environment. On top of that, SIEM capacity would need to scale by 2 to 2.5 times its current size, with an ongoing engineering load to keep it current.
The projected investment reached six figures annually, before accounting for the engineering effort required to build, tune, and sustain it.
The Solution
The organization reframed the decision. Instead of scaling existing infrastructure, the question became whether a purpose-built detection layer could deliver the same outcome, without the cost, time, or engineering resources that building and sustaining that capability internally would demand.
LABYRINTH was introduced as a specialized detection layer. Detection coverage expanded. SIEM costs did not.
Two workstreams were addressed:
Internal network detection. LABYRINTH decoys, deployed through Advanced Deception, placed across internal infrastructure to surface reconnaissance, service discovery, and unauthorized exploration. Detection generated through direct interaction with deception assets. No additional telemetry collection. No correlation rules to build or sustain.
Identity and Active Directory. Suspicious activity on domain controllers analyzed locally. Only relevant security events forwarded for centralized investigation. Full visibility into identity-focused attack techniques, without centralizing the full Active Directory telemetry volume.
This is what preemptive security looks like in practice: acting to deny, disrupt, or deceive an attacker before an attack succeeds, instead of detecting and responding after the fact. Advanced Deception is where that shows up first, exposing attackers before they reach anything real.
The Results
Reconnaissance, service discovery, and identity-focused attack techniques visible across the environment. Coverage expanded without expanding infrastructure.
SIEM infrastructure unchanged. Telemetry volume unchanged.
Six-figure annual cost avoided, approximately 5x lower than the SIEM scaling alternative.
Detection logic supported out of the box, not built or maintained internally. No added engineering effort.
The conventional path would have meant an ongoing engineering commitment to build and maintain custom detection logic. The LABYRINTH deployment needed none of that engineering build-out: detection logic came supported out of the box. The security team gained coverage, not a development project.
Interaction with a decoy is a confirmed threat. Analysts act on evidence with full investigation context, not alert queues to triage.
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