In previous discussions about Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), I’ve looked into the architectural benefits and product-level advantages of integrating Cribl. Today, let’s explore why Cribl isn’t just technically sound—it’s also a smart business decision that can help MSSPs like you manage and lower egress costs, creating a significant impact on the financial efficiency of your operations.

Running a service business is no small feat, and one of the key challenges MSSPs face is maintaining cost efficiency. In a sector where service contracts often extend over years with fixed pricing, any overage in costs directly affects your bottom line. With the cloud becoming a more prominent factor in service delivery, managing egress costs is crucial. For MSSPs, optimizing these costs translates to greater competitiveness and a healthier profit margin in a highly competitive market.

Cribl Stream – Egress Less

Cribl Stream is designed to help MSSPs control data egress by managing the volume and nature of data sent to destinations. Through techniques like field reduction, data aggregation, and sampling, Cribl Stream allows you to significantly cut down the amount of data transferred, leading to immediate egress cost savings. Additionally, Cribl Stream supports data compression across various destinations, including Cribl TCP and Cribl HTTP internal sources, enabling efficient control over data size and further reducing egress costs. By leveraging Worker Groups with these internal sources and destinations, MSSPs can compress data before it leaves their environment, minimizing data volume and the associated egress expenses.

This solution not only improves your operational efficiency but also gives your clients confidence that your services remain cost-effective, especially in cloud-heavy environments. MSSPs that utilize Cribl Stream are positioned to offer optimized services that mitigate the financial risks of egress charges.

Cribl Edge – Egress Less, or Not at All

Cribl Edge brings another layer of cost control by offering data pre-processing and compression at the edge, before the data even reaches Cribl Stream or other downstream systems. With Cribl Edge, data can be routed via Cribl TCP and Cribl HTTP internal sources/destinations, just as in Cribl Stream, enabling MSSPs to implement data compression and control data volume even closer to the source.

For scenarios where sending data offsite is unnecessary, Cribl Edge introduces an innovative solution: the Disk Spool Destination. This feature allows data to be stored locally on disk and accessed when needed via Cribl Search. This approach effectively eliminates egress costs associated with certain types of data, as it’s stored locally and only accessed as required. Plus, an additional perk for MSSPs is that events dropped in any pipeline on Cribl Edge do not count against ingestion quotas, helping you save even more on your Cribl bill.

By integrating Cribl Edge into your managed services, you not only cut down on egress costs but also offer a more adaptable solution to your clients, who might have data storage or retention needs that require minimal or no egress fees.

Cribl Search – Efficient On-Demand Data Access

Cribl Search offers a powerful way for MSSPs to perform targeted searches on data stored across multiple environments without the need to move or replicate data to a centralized location. By enabling federated search capabilities, Cribl Search allows MSSPs to query data directly where it lives, reducing the need for data to be transferred across networks and, consequently, minimizing egress costs.

This tool is ideal for MSSPs that need fast, on-demand access to data for compliance or audit purposes. Cribl Search enables your teams to sift through large data sets efficiently and only move the results that are necessary, further saving on egress expenses. With Cribl Search, you can effectively access and analyze data without incurring unnecessary costs, ensuring that your service remains both high-performance and cost-effective for clients.

Cribl Lake – Cost-Effective Long-Term Storage

Cribl Lake provides MSSPs with a cost-effective solution for storing vast amounts of data over the long term. Designed for efficient storage and retrieval, Cribl Lake allows data to be ingested and archived at low cost, reducing the financial burden of retaining large volumes of historical data. Data stored in Cribl Lake can be compressed and deduplicated, which helps MSSPs save on storage while still meeting the retention requirements of clients.

Cribl Lake integrates seamlessly with Cribl Stream, Cribl Edge, and Cribl Search, allowing MSSPs to route data efficiently and access it only when necessary. For MSSPs, this means that not only can they meet long-term retention requirements for compliance, but they can do so in a way that minimizes both storage and egress costs. Cribl Lake serves as a highly economical archive for infrequently accessed data, enabling MSSPs to deliver cost-effective solutions to their clients while maximizing profit margins.

Cribl S3 Destination – Double Dipped Savings

For MSSPs managing data archives, Cribl’s support for S3-compatible destinations like Amazon S3, Snowflake, and Databricks offers an excellent way to optimize both egress and storage costs. With Cribl Stream and Cribl Edge, data can be compressed before reaching these S3-compatible storage destinations. The result? Double savings—less data transmitted out, and a lower storage bill. This strategy is ideal for MSSPs that need to retain large volumes of long-term data for clients, providing a financially efficient solution to meet compliance and retention requirements.

Cribl’s S3 Destination support is a valuable addition to your MSSP toolkit in an industry where every dollar saved can impact competitiveness. It allows you to responsibly manage client data while keeping costs low for your business and your clients.

As Cribl continues to evolve its product offerings, we’re committed to helping MSSPs manage costs while maintaining high service quality. Stay tuned for more updates on how Cribl can empower MSSPs with innovative cost-saving capabilities!

Cribl, the Data Engine for IT and Security, empowers organizations to transform their data strategy. Customers use Cribl’s suite of products to collect, process, route, and analyze all IT and security data, delivering the flexibility, choice, and control required to adapt to their ever-changing needs.

We offer free training, certifications, and a free tier across our products. Our community Slack features Cribl engineers, partners, and customers who can answer your questions as you get started and continue to build and evolve. We also offer a variety of hands-on Sandboxes for those interested in how companies globally leverage our products for their data challenges.