The Challenge: Fragmented Data Stores in a Multi-Cloud World
As organizations spread data across multiple clouds and on‑premises environments, search and investigations become fragmented—not because the data is unavailable, but because it is distributed, inconsistently governed, and costly to move. In practice, that fragmentation creates risk: slower incident response, gaps in auditability, duplicated “shadow” copies of sensitive data, and operational workarounds that expand the attack surface. Federated Search is designed to help address these challenges by enabling teams to query data where it already lives, apply consistent access controls, and rapidly assemble an end-to-end view—without forcing another round of centralization or migration.
Deloitte and Cribl help clients address this challenge together: Deloitte designs and delivers modern telemetry architectures and governance frameworks, while Cribl provides the vendor-agnostic data engine—Cribl Stream, Cribl Edge, Cribl Search, and Cribl Lake—that lets teams search data where it lives, control costs, and stay compliant across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Key cloud environment challenges include:
Siloed data across different cloud providers, formats, and regions including onpremises deployments
Data sprawl and duplication from forgotten, unclassified stores or multiple platforms
Excessive costs associated with copying and moving large datasets
Substantial risks that come with data migration and infrastructure upgrades
Limited visibility and governance, especially for security and compliance use cases
Operational complexity for data teams who need rapid, cross-platform discovery and analytics
Cribl Federated Search: Concept and Capabilities
Security and compliance teams require searchability across disparate datasets located on multiple cloud platforms. Modern visibility depends on data flow and log management; telemetry (logs, events, metrics, and traces) is continuously generated, processed, routed, and retained across different tiers—some data is streaming in real time, while other data is stored for historical analysis, investigations, and audit needs. When those pipelines and stores are disconnected, teams lose time deciding where to look (and often end up copying data “just in case”). Cribl acts as a vendor-agnostic data engine and control plane, so teams decide what moves, where it lands, and how it’s shaped—without being locked into any single tool or storage vendor. Cribl Federated Search enables users to search across both streaming and stored data through a unified experience, accelerating time to discovery without requiring broad re-indexing or migration.
Cribl Federated Search transforms the search paradigm by enabling organizations to:
Connect disparate data sources across major cloud providers, APIs, and on-premises environments
Perform in-place search queries with no need to copy, index, or migrate data
Gain unified visibility with a single query interface, regardless of where data resides
Forward search results to Cribl Stream, Cribl Lake, applicable integrated data lake technologies, compatible endpoints, and for the purpose of executing essential data playbacks
Benefits of Federated Search with Deloitte and Cribl
Deloitte and Cribl help clients realize these benefits by combining Deloitte’s advisory and implementation capabilities with Cribl Search federated query engine:
Lowering cost through reduced data movement
Significantly lowers egress, storage, and compute costs by up to 65% as compared to traditional Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms.
Improved Speed and Scalability across distributed sources
Supports fast, parallelized querying across petabyte-scale datasets without waiting for central indexing cycles.
Secure and Efficient Data Governance
Centralized access and audit capabilities enable compliance, monitoring, and data stewardship.
Flexibility for Analytics and Security Workflows
Supports ad hoc analysis on historical or streaming sources, making it a boon for security teams, data engineers, and business analysts.
Simplified Operations
Decreases dependency on complex Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) or migration pipelines and reducing overheads for data teams.
Decouples storage and analytics, allowing operators to choose the architectural approach that allows them to meet their mission and reduces unnecessary changes in the future.
Search Packs offer dashboards that come pre-loaded with analytics, or teams may customize their own
How Deloitte and Cribl Deliver Federated Search
Deloitte and Cribl bring Federated Search to life through three integrated offerings:
Cribl Strategy (Deloitte-led): Advisory and strategic planning services to help modernize SIEM and telemetry architectures for Federated Search
Cribl Engineering (joint delivery): Design and implementation of Cribl Edge, Cribl Stream, Cribl Search, and Cribl Lake into hybrid and multi-cloud environments
Cribl Operations (Deloitte-led): Ongoing operations and optimization services to tune queries, Packs, and data cost controls over time
Federated Search Operational Workflow
Traditional search tools often create vendor lock-in and require transforming and centralizing data, which increases infrastructure cost, burden, and exposes organizations to compliance risks. Cribl Federated Search follows a straightforward lifecycle: connect to sources, execute queries, enrich and aggregate results, then finally route outcomes to the proper destinations or teams. The steps below describe the typical flow from end to end.
1. Data Source Discovery and Connection:
Cribl Federated Search connects to designated data sources across cloud, on-premises, and other environments so teams can search data where it already resides. The benefits of Cribl Search come without exploring the additional advantages of integration with Cribl Stream and Cribl Lake. For example, Cribl Lake direct access allows users to integrate their disparate datasets into a centralized location via Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Cribl Lake also allows you to Bring Your own Storage, configuring connections to major cloud object storage platforms. Furthermore, Cribl Lake allows organizations to effectively align with M-21-311 requirements through long-term data retention. Though both Cribl Search and Cribl Stream can operate without each other or Cribl Lake, they both can interact with the data in Cribl Lake as a Lake Dataset, as conveyed in the graphic below.
2. Federated Query Execution:
Users submit queries via a centralized interface, and Cribl orchestrates these queries across specified sources. As results return, Cribl provides visibility into what data is being generated and its origin, helping operators and analysts contextualize it quickly. Data is collected close to its origin, from sources such as IoT devices, servers, apps, or network appliances.
A centralized query interface supports early filtering, tagging, and enrichment, minimizing unnecessary data movement and controlling “data sprawl” before it grows. This approach removes the need to manage multiple data silos and provides broad visibility which covers a variety of organizational environments. Federated queries also allow teams to selectively query only relevant data in place, thus avoiding the additional cost of bulk data movement, duplication, or redundancy in querying the same data.
3. Search Results Aggregation:
Results include transparent metadata about source, lineage, and any enrichment applied. This enables the user to trace each result back to its point of origin and understand how it was transformed. By searching data in place and presenting the results in a unified experience, Cribl Federated Search delivers the ease of a centralized search index combined with the flexibility of decentralized storage, without requiring bulk data duplication.
4. Route Results:
Cribl Route Results allows teams to route the results to downstream systems, whether that is a:
Cloud Data Warehouse
SIEM Platform
Data Lake
Real-time analytics tool
Customizable routing rules can be created based on metadata, content, source type, or enrichment status. This enables results to reach the right tools for storage, investigation, alerting, or reporting, without rework.
5. Visualizing Search Results
By default, queries that are submitted will return to the operator in an organized and tabular format. There is a time series to group timestamped results, as well as a list of your data fields to further classify the queried data. Teams can customize their own dashboards for different values and alerts. However, operators can visualize their data without building a dashboard but instead by browsing for a Search Pack that works best with their data.
6. Security and Governance:
Cribl Search is built with enterprise-grade security to empower organizations to query distributed data confidently across clouds. Here’s how it protects your data:
In-Place Search and Just-in-Time Results Handling
Cribl performs searches where data resides, avoiding unnecessary duplication or transfers
Minimizes risks of lingering data
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
Fine-grained permissions provides admins control of who can search which datasets
Integrates with your existing enterprise identity infrastructure for broad authentication
Full audit logs track access, supporting compliance and investigations
Supports multi-tenancy, isolated environments for different teams or regions
Encryption and Secure Connectivity
Data exchanged during queries is encrypted in transit (TLS/SSL)
At-rest encryption provided by storage vendors remains intact
Compliance Alignment
Features support regulatory requirements (such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI) via auditable logs and required controls
Data residency laws are respected through federated, location-bound searches
Real-World Use Cases
Security Investigation: Rapidly triage threats using querying cloud logs, SIEM records, and archival stores in place.
What are some other security benefits?Cross-cloud breach analysis: Rapidly search cloud logs to trace external attack origins
Insider threat detection: Query access logs across environments to identify suspicious data downloads
Ransomware triage: Hunt for encryption events and unusual file access patterns company-wide
Phishing investigation: Correlate email logs and endpoint alerts for compromised accounts
Real-time threat hunting: Execute federated queries to uncover zero-day exploit activity in distributed systems
Compliance Inspection: Surface regulated data across clouds, without unnecessary transfers; produce audit-ready evidence faster
What are some specific compliance improvements?PII access review: Locate and analyze access events to sensitive customer data for GDPR compliance.
HIPAA audit support: Produce unified logs of electronic protected health information (ePHI) access
Regulatory response readiness: Instantly pull evidence of security control checks during audits
Retention policy enforcement: Identify non-compliant legacy records in multiple cloud storage systems
SOX compliance validation: Track financial data changes and review access controls across subsidiaries
Business Intelligence: Combine user behavior or transaction data across regions and services for fast reporting.
How else can Federated Search help with business?
Sales trend analysis: Aggregate transaction data across cloud regions for global insights
Product usage discovery: Compare logins and activity for products hosted in different data centers
Customer segmentation: Merge marketing data from hybrid storage for targeted outreach
Inventory optimization: Cross-reference warehouse and online orders from diverse databases
Real-time campaign monitoring: Track ad response metrics from distributed event logs
Operational Troubleshooting: Pinpoint performance issues or anomalies across your various cloud platforms with federated log searches.
What troubleshooting pathways are improved?Service outage diagnosis: Query error logs across platforms to isolate downtime sources
Performance bottleneck detection: Search application logs to pinpoint latency spikes
Deployment rollback analysis: Confirm rollbacks by reviewing federated change logs
Configuration drift analysis: Compare config files and settings across environments
Incident root cause analysis: Federate search across system, network, and application logs to connect the dots
What Comes Next
Deloitte can help organizations plan, configure, and operationalize Cribl Federated Search across the enterprise, from source onboarding and governance to operating model and adoption. For organizations looking to reduce SIEM-related costs, Deloitte can also help position complementary approaches; this includes an Enterprise Log Management application designed to integrate easily with your cloud ecosystem will help you save tremendously on the high ingest costs associated with parsing data on legacy systems. Clients see ~90% cost reduction compared to traditional ingest solutions when using the Cold Storage Architectures (CAE) infrastructure & ~65% when combining CAE & Cribl.
If you are interested in how to expand your enterprises Cribl Federated Search capabilities, please contact the Deloitte leaders:
Chris Knackstedt
Managing Director – Commercial Services
Deloitte & Touche LLP
cknackstedt@deloitte.com
Kent Meyer
Managing Director - Government Public Services
Deloitte & Touche LLP
kentmeyer@deloitte.com
David Silverman
Cribl Sales Director
dsilverman@cribl.io
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