never liked pfsense… the interface usually got in the way more than it helped. Ran a linux router for years…
These days i have mikrotik gear at the edge. (no they aren’t insecure… all of the cve’s you’ve heard about were publicly exposed admin interfaces…).
A simple syslog server is ready.
Look into ELK stack. I personally hate it but if you can learn it there’s a chance you can build a career on it.