The job is asking you to to do a CISO or CTO's job here. That seems a bit rich for entry-level security, honestly. Either way, I would consider price, support for the technology stack and Saas/Cloud providers they use, log sources support for OSes they use and on-prem tech like firewalls if they're not SD-WAN, and how they perform in things like Gartner MQ for SIEM (I'm no fan, but it shows you are thinking business). If you have the requirements for the scenario, make a spreadsheet with them as rows and at least three separate SIEM solutions as columns and then fill out notes and qualitative ratings on each. If they missed obvious things like cost and ease of implementation add them but don't "I told you so" with that. Good luck! More on reddit.com

Most can agree that leadership tends to put more weight into 3rd party opinions because they're worried about bias. Gartner aimed to answer the questions leadership tend to ask. "If I have to spend 5,6,7 figure money, what product performs the best for the money?" Gartner then charged a crapton of money to gain access to their other resources and they made bank. More on reddit.com

What are the drivers toward looking at SIEM? If you're heavily SaaS based that may be a challenge based on how well those providers are able to furnish data for the SIEM. I'd make sure you really hammer out your needs and goals and they do a deep dive into seeing what logs you are actually able to get hold of. Once you have that you'll be able to do a better assessment of what fits you. More on reddit.com

Depends on how you use them. They're very expensive (budget 100k, can even go higher). The amount scales depending on how much you expect to use them. ETA: They can help identify best tech for your org, negotiate contracts, review MSAs, and streamline processes. But you've got to be ON YOUR GAME re: calculating ROI. Might be best if it's an IT expense, as they stand to gain the most ROI in license fee negotiations. Have them gather info on all technology licenses and you can reduce spend without any Gartner expense hitting your GL. (Or, add it to your budget, use it to reduce spend on things like M365 / E5 licensing, and make the CIO look good...then cash in that favor when you need an ally in the boardroom.) Separately: Their Security & Risk Mgt. Summit is one of the best conferences I've attended. More on reddit.com