The arc of cable television is a classic story of consolidation, disruption, and partial reinvention.

In short: cable invented bundling, streaming broke it apart, and the market is now rebuilding a new kind of bundle—less centralized, more app-based, but driven by the same incentives of scale, exclusivity, and predictable subscription revenue.

The evolution of the SIEM market in cybersecurity closely mirrors the cable television story: an early era of consolidation around a dominant delivery model, a disruptive unbundling driven by new technology and customer frustration, and a gradual return toward rebundling—only in a new form.

Let’s walk through it and talk about what modern security teams should do next.

Consolidation: The “Cable Bundle” Era of SIEM

Traditional SIEMs emerged as centralized platforms designed to solve a clear problem: organizations needed a single place to collect, store, and correlate security logs. Much like cable operators aggregated broadcast channels into one subscription package, SIEM vendors bundled multiple security functions—log management, correlation rules, alerting, compliance reporting—into one monolithic system.

The appeal was obvious: one platform, one vendor, one source of truth. Enterprises bought into SIEMs because they solved a number of real problems for security operations teams. Regulatory compliance and the growth of SOCs made SIEM the default “cable package” for security operations.

Over time, however, the bundle became bloated. Customers paid for broad functionality, much of which was underused, while operational costs such as storage, tuning, and staffing continued to rise (similar to consumers paying for hundreds of channels they didn’t watch).

Disruption: The “Streaming Unbundling” of Security Tools

Just as streaming disrupted cable by breaking content out of the bundle, the SIEM market was disrupted by cloud computing, cheaper storage, and specialized point solutions.

New categories emerged:

  • EDR vendors provided endpoint-focused detection without SIEM overhead
  • Cloud-native logging platforms made data access faster and cheaper
  • SOAR tools (when properly operationalized) automated response outside the SIEM
  • Threat intelligence platforms specialized in enrichment and context

Security teams began “cord-cutting” from traditional SIEM reliance, stitching together best-of-breed tools rather than depending on one expensive central platform.

The promise resembled early streaming: more flexibility, better user experience, and paying only for what delivered value.

Fragmentation: The Proliferation of “Disparate Streaming Services”

But unbundling came with tradeoffs. Instead of one SIEM, organizations now faced dozens of tools, dashboards, integrations, and data silos. Security operations became fragmented, much like entertainment consumers juggling Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and others.

The operational burden shifted: teams gained choice, but lost simplicity. Tool sprawl created gaps in visibility and increased integration costs. The market began to look less like liberation and more like a new kind of complexity.

Reinvention: The Return of the Bundle in a New Shape

Today, the SIEM market is circling back toward rebundling, just as streaming is reinventing aggregation through new bundles and platforms.

We see this in:

  • “Next-gen SIEM” platforms that promise cloud-scale analytics
  • XDR suites bundling endpoint, network, and identity signals
  • Security data lakes that centralize telemetry again
  • Managed detection platforms acting as aggregators across tools

The industry is rebuilding a centralized layer—not the old SIEM, but a modernized version optimized for cloud and automation.

The same incentives drive the return: security vendors want stickier platforms, and customers want fewer subscriptions, fewer consoles, and clearer outcomes.

Key Difference: Security’s Stakes Are Higher

The analogy holds strong, but cybersecurity differs in one critical way: fragmentation is not just inconvenient, it is dangerous. In streaming, too many subscriptions cause annoyance. In security, too many disconnected tools create blind spots, delayed detection, and real business risk.

So…What Now?

To sum up, the SIEM market, like cable television, is shaped by cyclical forces:

  • Bundling emerges for simplicity and scale
  • Disruption unbundles around flexibility and innovation
  • Fragmentation creates overload
  • Reinvention rebuilds aggregation in a new architecture

In both cases, the future is not a return to the old model, but a hybrid: a rebundled ecosystem that reflects new technology, new economics, and shifting customer expectations.

Just as entertainment is now searching for a better equilibrium between fragmented streaming services and the old cable bundle, cybersecurity has arrived at a similar inflection point. 

This is where a security data mesh architecture can have outsized impact. 

Rather than forcing customers back into a monolithic “all-in-one” SIEM or leaving them to manage an overwhelming sprawl of disconnected tools, a data mesh enables a more modern middle path: decentralized ownership of security data, interoperable domains, and shared standards that preserve flexibility without sacrificing cohesion.

In effect, it allows organizations to regain the benefits of aggregation: visibility, correlation, and operational simplicity, without recreating the rigidity and cost of legacy SIEM bundling. 

For customers, this means: faster detection, reduced integration burden, and a security foundation that can evolve with the ecosystem and AI initiatives which rely on access to normalized data.

So, if you’re working through a SIEM renewal, eyeing a migration, sweating how to implement AI in the SOC, or just trying to figure out how to control data-driven costs while actually enabling your team to be more effective, pause. 

Start with the data layer. Embrace a security data mesh approach and reap the rewards both short, and long-term. You will be surprised at how the way you think about those other projects starts to shift, along with their end value and viability.

Not sure where to start? No worries, we got you. Reach out and connect with one of our SecDataOps experts.