In recent years, the growing number of cyber threats and increasingly strict regulatory requirements (such as GDPR, NIS2, and DORA directives) have placed organizations under pressure to implement effective systems for monitoring, detecting, and responding to security incidents. SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and XDR (Extended Detection and Response) tools have become essential components of security infrastructure for many companies.

However, many commercial solutions come with high licensing costs, complex architectures, and vendor lock-in risks. In this context, open source SIEM/XDR solutions are becoming increasingly popular. In 2025, we are witnessing particularly strong growth in interest in these systems — let’s look at why, and how the Wazuh platform fits into this trend.

Factors driving the growing popularity of open source SIEM/XDR

Below are the key drivers that make open source solutions more attractive:

1. Cost pressure and budget optimization

• No licensing fees – open source solutions often help avoid high software licensing costs, which is especially important for small and medium-sized enterprises.
• Reduced fixed costs – flexibility in choosing components (servers, databases, analytics) allows organizations to better align spending with actual needs.

2. Flexibility and customization capabilities

• Code modification and extension possibilities – users can customize detection rules, integrate with their own systems, or modify response processes.
• Integration with DevOps/DevSecOps ecosystems – open source tools more easily fit into CI/CD pipelines and automation frameworks (e.g., infrastructure as code).
• No vendor lock-in – reduced risk of being “trapped” in a single technology stack or forced migration.

3. Increasing maturity of open source technologies

• Growing competitiveness and project development – open source tools are increasingly offering features comparable to commercial SIEM/XDR solutions.
• Scalability and performance – thanks to improved architecture, optimizations, and community contributions, many open source projects can now handle large volumes of logs and events efficiently.

4. Market and regulatory trends

• SIEM market growth – projections estimated that by 2025, the global SIEM market would reach around USD 10.78 billion, growing at a rate of about 12% annually.
• Demand for compliance and audit-ready tools – many regulations require event logging, log analysis, and incident response capabilities, creating space for SIEM/XDR solutions.
• Migration to cloud and hybrid environments – cloud-native architectures and multi-module tools capable of covering on-premise, cloud, and container environments are becoming essential.

5. Innovation in Analytics and AI

• Integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) – AI and ML enhance the ability to process logs, detect anomalies, and correlate events, improving overall system effectiveness.
• AI integrations in open source projects – increasingly, open source projects integrate with AI agents; for example, Wazuh recently introduced AI agent integration to enable interactive queries about incidents and simplify data analysis.

Wazuh as an example of open source SIEM/XDR

Wazuh is one of the most recognized projects combining SIEM and XDR capabilities within the open source model. Below is an overview of its features, strengths, and challenges.

What is Wazuh?

Wazuh is an open source security platform that integrates log monitoring, threat detection, incident response, compliance analysis, and endpoint protection.

From a functionality perspective, it serves as both a traditional SIEM (data collection, correlation, alerts) and as an XDR component — aggregating telemetry from endpoints, cloud environments, and network devices into a unified environment.

Wazuh releases are actively developed — for example, 2025 brought versions 4.11.x and 4.12.0.
More at: documentation.wazuh.com

Advantages of Wazuh

• Comprehensive out-of-the-box feature set

Wazuh provides rule-based and anomaly-based detection, file integrity monitoring (FIM), vulnerability scanning, log collection, compliance analysis, and alerting.

• Integration with other technologies

Wazuh integrates easily with Elasticsearch / OpenSearch and Kibana / OpenSearch Dashboards, offering powerful event visualization and search capabilities. It can also cooperate with EDR, SOAR, and external agent tools.

• Scalability and distributed architecture

Wazuh’s architecture supports distributed agents, managers, and indexing servers, enabling handling of large numbers of agents and high log volumes.

• Strong community and open ecosystem support

The active user and developer community contributes rules, integrations, and knowledge, accelerating development and adaptation to new threats.

• Unified SIEM and XDR platform

Instead of splitting monitoring layers, Wazuh aims to consolidate multiple functions into a single platform — reducing architectural complexity and simplifying management.

Source: Wazuh

Challenges and limitations of Wazuh

Implementing and maintaining Wazuh can pose certain challenges.

It requires proper expertise, as tuning detection rules and administering the platform demands knowledge of cybersecurity, operating systems, and data analysis.

In open source environments, users often need to create or adjust detection rules themselves, which increases the workload. Although the license is free, operational costs — infrastructure maintenance, administrator time, and data consolidation — can still be significant.

Another limitation is scalability in environments with very high event rates, where careful architecture planning or a hybrid approach with commercial components might be necessary.

There is also the inherent risk of open source code being analyzed by potential attackers, though this is typically offset by the community’s active participation and rapid security updates.

Summary and future outlook

In 2025, we are witnessing a clear shift toward open source solutions in the SIEM/XDR domain. The key forces driving this trend include:

• the need for cost efficiency and flexibility,
• the growing maturity of open source technologies,
• regulatory pressure and expanding IT environments,
• innovation in analytics and AI/ML across open projects.

Within this context, Wazuh stands out as a mature and compelling option: it offers a broad range of features, strong integration with visualization ecosystems, and a vibrant community — while remaining flexible and adaptable to each organization’s needs.

However, success depends on a conscious approach: proper architecture design, skilled personnel, and resource management. For organizations with limited budgets or moderate security needs, Wazuh (or other high-quality open source alternatives) can represent a realistic and efficient alternative to expensive commercial systems.

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