If you've spent time researching cybersecurity solutions, you've hit the wall of acronyms: SIEM, MDR, XDR, NDR, EDR, SOAR. Each comes with its own vendors, pricing models, and assumptions about the resources you have. This paper cuts through it — explaining what each category actually does, who it's designed for, and where each falls short for SMBs.
The traditional backbone of enterprise security operations. Collects logs from across your entire IT environment and correlates them to identify suspicious activity, generate alerts, and support compliance reporting.
The blunt question: who is going to read the output? If the answer is "no one, really," you're paying for expensive log storage, not security.
MDR emerged as the market's answer to the SIEM problem. Instead of giving you a tool, MDR providers give you the outcome: 24/7 monitoring, threat detection, investigation, and response, delivered as a managed service.
XDR correlates telemetry across multiple security layers — endpoints, network, cloud, email, and identity — into a unified platform. The promise is broader visibility with less manual effort than a SIEM.
The closest category to what Ignix does. NDR solutions monitor network traffic to detect threats that endpoint and perimeter tools miss — particularly effective at lateral movement, C2 communications, and data exfiltration.
When you map these solutions against what SMBs actually need, a clear gap emerges. Every existing category either provides the right capability at the wrong price point, or the right price point without the right capability.
| Requirement | SIEM | MDR | XDR | NDR | Ignix |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Network-level visibility | ◑ | ✗ | ◑ | ✓ | ✓ |
| No dedicated analyst required | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Plain-English reporting | ✗ | ◑ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Real-time threat alerts | ◑ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| No endpoint agents needed | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Affordable for <100 employees | ✗ | ◑ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Shadow IT detection | ◑ | ✗ | ◑ | ✓ | ✓ |
| No hardware required | ✗ | ✓ | ◑ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Deployment in days, not weeks | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Ignix occupies the gap that table describes — the column on the right. It delivers network-level security visibility, powered by AI, in a format that SMBs can actually use. No hardware, no agents, no dashboards to master, no analyst to hire.
Ignix is not a SIEM. It doesn't aggregate logs from every device in your infrastructure, doesn't require months of configuration, and doesn't generate thousands of alerts requiring manual triage.
Ignix is not an MDR. It doesn't install agents on your endpoints and doesn't provide 24/7 human-led incident response. If you need someone to remotely contain an active breach on a compromised laptop, you need an MDR provider.
Ignix is not a replacement for your firewall. Your firewall is still your first line of defence. Ignix analyses what your firewall sees but doesn't report on — the patterns in allowed traffic that reveal threats no blocklist will catch.
For a typical 50-person business, here's how the landscape looks in practice:
| Solution | Annual Cost (approx.) | What You Get |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise SIEM | £40,000–£150,000+ | Comprehensive log management — if you have staff to run it |
| MDR (endpoint) | £9,000–£30,000 | 24/7 endpoint monitoring and response |
| XDR Platform | £30,000–£100,000+ | Cross-layer detection — if you have the stack to feed it |
| Enterprise NDR | £20,000–£60,000+ | Network visibility — with enterprise complexity |
| Ignix | A fraction of the above | AI-powered network monitoring with plain-English reports and real-time alerts |
The smartest approach to SMB security isn't choosing one tool to rule them all. It's layering the right capabilities at the right price points:
You already have this. It blocks known threats and controls basic access policy.
Monitoring your devices for malware, ransomware, and endpoint-level compromises.
Everything the other layers miss: shadow IT, data exfiltration, anomalous traffic patterns, compromised IoT devices, DNS threats, and insider risks. Real-time alerts. Daily plain-English reports.
Someone reading the Ignix reports and acting on recommendations — five minutes over a morning coffee.
This layered model provides coverage that approaches what enterprise organisations achieve with SIEM and XDR — at a fraction of the cost and without any of the operational complexity.
Every network is different. Book a free assessment and we'll show you what Ignix sees on yours — and how it compares to what your current tools are telling you.
hello@ignix.co.uk