AWS X-Ray vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

The compared Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Splunk solutions aren't in the same category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #17 in APM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 3.9% mindshare in the category. Splunk is ranked #1 in SIEM , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 11.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

AWS X-Ray

Read 7 AWS X-Ray reviews

6,326 Views
5,744 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Enterprise Security

Read 301 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews

16,171 Views
13,494 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

AWS X-Ray

Splunk Enterprise Security

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AWS X-Ray and Splunk Enterprise Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security Report (Updated: May 2023).

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

May 2023

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Helped 824,053 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

AWS X-Ray

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th)

Splunk Enterprise Security

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

301

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (1st), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. AWS X-Ray is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 3.9%, up 3.5% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 11.2% mindshare, down 15.0% since last year.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

Parth Solanki

Founder & CEO at Quicklead.io

Saves time, is relatively cheap, and helps find errors

If we get any error, we can go to X-Ray and get all the requests for a certain error in one place. It makes it easy to find the issue in your own product. You can look at logs and error logs and find loopholes. You can do direct queries to get specific requests over the course of a day. It's very good at error reporting and quite fast. You also get a lot of information, including IP addresses, user locations, et cetera.

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Avinash Gopu.

Associate VP & Cyber Security Specialist at US Bank

Offers good visibility into multiple environments, significantly reduces our alert volume, and speeds up our security investigations

There are limitations with Splunk not detecting all user activity, especially on mainframes and network devices. This is because Splunk relies on agents, which cannot access certain workstations. In these cases, we have to rely on application data. For example, with mainframes, manual reports are generated and sent to Splunk, limiting visibility to what's manually reported. This lack of automation for specific platforms needs improvement from Splunk. Additionally, API access is limited for other applications that rely on API calls and requests. This requires heavy customization on Splunk's end. These are the main challenges we've encountered. Monitoring multiple cloud platforms, like Azure, GCP, and AWS, with Splunk Enterprise Security presents some challenges. While Splunk provides different connectors for each provider, consolidating data from two domains across distinct cloud environments can be complex. However, leveraging pre-built templates and Splunk's data collation capabilities can help overcome these hurdles. Despite initial difficulties, I believe Splunk can effectively address this task, earning it an eight out of ten rating for its multi-cloud monitoring capabilities. While Splunk Enterprise Security offers insider threat detection capabilities, its effectiveness could be enhanced by integrating with additional tools, such as endpoint security solutions. This integrated approach is particularly crucial for financial institutions, which often require dedicated endpoint security teams. While using multiple tools is valuable, further improvements within Splunk itself are also necessary. Considering both external integration and internal development, I would rate its current insider threat detection capabilities as three out of ten. Threat detection is where Splunk falls behind. While it offers tools, other use cases require additional work. PAM is an enterprise tool that centralizes information about users, servers, and everything else. It needs real-time monitoring, which I haven't seen in any of the companies I've worked for. They only rely on Splunk for alerting, but real-time monitoring should be handled by the endpoint security team's tools. This means there's no detection or analysis at the machine or endpoint level. Additionally, threat analysis reporting is also absent.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."

"The solution has made it easier for us to trace the problems that we have with our requests and to monitor the timing of each step in each request we do in our endpoints."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"The error analysis capabilities of X-Ray are really good."

"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."

"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."

"The most promising feature of AWS X-Ray is that you can debug the issues through the proper logs. You can also get an analysis out of the logs for some use cases, though I have yet to try all the features of AWS X-Ray."

"The most important one is compliance. We're able to achieve our regulatory levels. We're able to achieve the security level that we need for the federal government."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its data modeling."

"The technical support is among the best in the market."

"The most valuable features of Splunk Enterprise Security are the enterprise search bar and the dashboards."

"It provides logs in one place, so they are easy to find. It collects the logs from multiple places, then you have just one place where you see the whole flow from the front-end to the back-end."

"From my experience, the visual aid that it provides is most valuable. There are charts and other means to provide information."

"Splunk has give us the capability to easily track problems and their status."

"Splunk incorporates a lot of elements that help to reduce security risks. For it to reach certain compliance, we need to have some security insight. Splunk is a very good SIEM, it’s a top solution, but the best feature is its cost of visibility. We have all the most important features to detect vulnerabilities or risks."

"The dashboard is amazing. Out-of-the-box dashboard is very good. It is very user-friendly."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

Cons

"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."

"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."

"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."

"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."

"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."

"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."

"What needs to be better in AWS X-Ray is the log filtering. Predefined filters could be helpful because the power of analytics comes from how you can filter the data. I also want to see more KPIs from AWS X-Ray."

"Like most Amazon products, the user interface, configuration, and tuning aren't the easiest. That's the biggest reason why people tend to go to products like TerraForm and Terragrunt. We use TerraForm and Terragrunt. So, for setting things up and interacting with X-Ray, it's definitely the user interface that can be better."

"The pricing can be better."

"I would like to get visibility into the data pipelines on heavy forwarders and indexers to see exactly their source and the cause of saturation when it occurs. This would help us learn even more about our high use applications."

"Spam has different plugins but by default, the logs are not organized, it shows that there are roll-ups that are out of the box. I saw many plugins that can help improve or extend Splunk's functionality but I haven't tried any of them."

"My company could benefit from doing more Splunk training with Splunk consultants teaching us how to use it."

"I would like to have fraud detection features. Fraud is within the same turf as with security operations. Fraud and cybersecurity work hand in hand. I would like to have detection capabilities, or at least dashboards in Enterprise Security for fraud."

"The configuration could be better."

"Previously, they developed custom connectors or add-ons for a lot of applications. But that number can be upgraded still. There are a lot of applications in the world that are not supported."

"Many of my clients want to get better at Splunk, but they're afraid of using the tool because they feel it's too complex for them."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As you develop a relationship with Amazon, your pricing gets lower. You get credits for the amount of the system you use, and then if you're the government, you can get government pricing. For commercial users, there's a hump when you go from small to medium to big enterprise. Small businesses can live pretty easily off the free tier in a lot of cases, but when you go from a medium to a big enterprise, it becomes more expensive on a per-user basis. I'd like to see that curve going in a different way where pricing can be driven down while people are trying to adopt the technology."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."

"Splunk ES is quite expensive compared to some products on the market."

"I work on the technical side, so I don't know precise figures. However, I know that Splunk is a premium product, so it's somewhat costly. Still, you get a lot of unique features for the money."

"ROI is estimated at saving my team roughly 10 to 12 man hours per week in troubleshooting for our company as well as what our profits had been from our services of installing, configuring, and supporting other clients with the product."

"In addition to the licensing fee, there is also a support and maintenance charge."

"The cost is on the high end, which makes it difficult for some organizations to use."

"The subscription is monthly."

"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is high."

"From what I have seen so far, Splunk has multiple cost models. The one that we are using is pretty good when it comes to ingesting data into the environment. It has worked out pretty well."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at Deloitte & Touche

Feb 26, 2015

HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm

We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS X-Ray?

AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?

AWS X-Ray is very beneficial, however, it is expensive. It should be more cost-effective.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?

It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java. It should also have custom annotations and better instruments for external API services. In addition to these, X-Ray...

See all answers

What SOC product do you recommend?

For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...

See all answers

What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?

It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...

See all answers

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?

Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 18% of the time

Sentry vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Monitor vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 13% of the time

New Relic vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 13% of the time

OpenTelemetry vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 1% of the time

More AWS X-Ray Competitors

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 9% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 8% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 5% of the time

Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray

December 2024

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security

November 2024

Download Splunk Enterprise Security product report

Learn More

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Splunk

Overview

AWS X-Ray is a powerful debugging and performance analysis tool offered by Amazon Web Services. It allows developers to trace requests made to their applications and identify bottlenecks and issues.

With X-Ray, developers can visualize the entire request flow and pinpoint the exact location where errors occur. It provides detailed insights into the performance of individual components and helps optimize the overall application performance.

X-Ray integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, making it easy to trace requests across different services and identify dependencies. It also offers a comprehensive set of APIs and SDKs, enabling developers to instrument their applications and capture valuable data for analysis. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, AWS X-Ray is a valuable tool for developers looking to improve the performance and reliability of their applications.

Splunk Enterprise Security is widely used for security operations, including threat detection, incident response, and log monitoring. It centralizes log management, offers security analytics, and ensures compliance, enhancing the overall security posture of organizations.

Companies leverage Splunk Enterprise Security to monitor endpoints, networks, and users, detecting anomalies, brute force attacks, and unauthorized access. They use it for fraud detection, machine learning, and real-time alerts within their SOCs. The platform enhances visibility and correlates data from multiple sources to identify security threats efficiently. Key features include comprehensive dashboards, excellent reporting capabilities, robust log aggregation, and flexible data ingestion. Users appreciate its SIEM capabilities, threat intelligence, risk-based alerting, and correlation searches. Highly scalable and stable, it suits multi-cloud environments, reducing alert volumes and speeding up investigations.

What are the key features?

Comprehensive Dashboards: Provide a holistic view of security operations.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports various data sources for better analysis.
Robust Log Aggregation: Centralizes log management for easier monitoring.
Machine Learning Toolkit: Enhances threat detection and prediction capabilities.
SIEM Capabilities: Integrates security information and event management.
Threat Intelligence: Utilizes external information to improve security measures.
Risk-Based Alerting: Prioritizes alerts based on the risk they pose.
Correlation Searches: Identifies and correlates security events effectively.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced Visibility: Improves monitoring across endpoints, networks, and users.
Faster Incident Response: Speeds up identification and resolution of security issues.
Reduced Alert Volumes: Lowers false positives and enhances signal-to-noise ratio.
Scalability: Adapts to growing and changing security needs.
Improved Security Operations: Integrates multiple security facets into one platform.

Splunk Enterprise Security is implemented across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail. Financial institutions use it for fraud detection and compliance, while healthcare organizations leverage its capabilities to safeguard patient data. Retailers deploy it to protect customer information and ensure secure transactions.

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow

Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

May 2023

Free Report: AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.

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