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Azure Monitor vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
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. Azure Monitor is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 9.8%, up 9.1% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 10.9% mindshare, down 14.3% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Swapan Biswas - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 29, 2022
A powerful Kusto query language but the alerting mechanism needs improvement
Our company is a service integrator and we use the solution to monitor logs, metrics, and applications for customers. We have 200 users throughout our company.  The tools for logs and metrics are pretty good and easy to use. We can do metric monitoring, log monitoring, and prepare queries to…
Avinash Gopu. - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 1, 2024
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable functions of Azure Monitor for our clients are its ability to monitor CPU usage and detect any potential issues before they escalate into actual problems. This helps in proactively addressing issues and preventing disruptions in our services. Additionally, Azure Monitor's integration with Azure for implementation has been quite straightforward and easy to manage."
"The most valuable feature is the universality of their functionalities in all Azure services, including, software solutions."
"Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment."
"Provides an overview and high-level information."
"Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud."
"The security and support are good."
"The feature that I found most valuable in Azure Monitor is its monitoring abilities. With Azure Monitor, you are able to monitor all of your cloud resources across multiple subscriptions in one dashboard and create solution-specific alerts that can trigger an email to the team responsible for that specific solution."
"The most valuable feature is that it ensures our servers are up."
"The most valuable features in Splunk Enterprise Security are the cluster capabilities."
"The ability to ingest any data and display it in a way that anyone can understand."
"Splunk gives my clients the ability to bring multiple, disparate types of data together, then correlate and report on them."
"The varied prebuilt feature is the most valuable because it ensures that we have complete coverage over all of the key questions."
"Splunk Enterprise Security helped us with faster detection of threats."
"Internal tracking is helpful because we do not like to deal with multiple ticketing systems, and I am not a fan of ServiceNow. We are able to keep everything internal and utilize Enterprise Security."
"The site is constantly up, and it's been really easy to adjust the data."
"You can check up on security from the dashboards."
 

Cons

"Enhancing and reaching a level of detail that facilitates pinpointing and addressing issues at such a refined level within the application and database components would be helpful."
"The solution should have cross-connection or cross-communication between tech partners."
"Lacks information including details related to where problems lie."
"The process of implementation needs to be easier."
"In terms of pricing, Azure Monitor's billing based on data size can sometimes lead to increased costs, especially when developers need to purge data frequently. While there are mechanisms in place to track and manage this, there is room for improvement in terms of optimizing data pausing and related processes. Enhancements in this area could help mitigate potential billing concerns and provide a more seamless experience for users."
"I'd like the solution to do more around vulnerability assessment. It's lacking in the product right now."
"The troubleshooting logs need improvement. There should be some improvement there. I have a hard time finding the right logs at the right times whenever there is an issue occurring."
"They should include advanced logging on the database level in the Azure pool."
"We usually have to follow up with technical support on our open cases."
"Its search or filtering capability is nice, but it can be improved. It is currently a bit complicated, and it should be simplified. If we can write the search filter in a more simplified way, it would be better."
"Splunk's ability to analyze malicious activities scores an 8 out of 10, but there's room for improvement. By analyzing emerging patterns, Splunk could identify and predict potential threats more effectively."
"Splunk needs local technical support."
"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."
"The ingestion happens quickly, so you can run up the data costs if you use the default settings. It isn't a problem for government agencies in the Saudi market, but many of the corporations in India are small or medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford that kind of ingestion system."
"I would like Splunk to add more integration. QRadar has many indications with more products than Splunk."
"Deployment is not difficult but the lock sources and configurations can take time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is a monthly fee."
"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."
"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."
"Azure Monitor's price is minimal to the point of being almost negligible."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"It's a costly solution"
"The solution is expensive, but it is worth the price."
"There is a monthly fee for the alerts triggered and the data stored."
"Splunk licensing model might seem expensive but with all the gain in functionalities you will have compared to traditional SIEM solutions I think it’s worth the price."
"Splunk ES is quite expensive compared to some products on the market."
"Splunk is really expensive compared to all the other tools on the market, including Microsoft Sentinel."
"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."
"Personnel costs are saved by not having to involve the domain developers from multiple teams when tracing a problem that spans multiple platforms."
"Licensing is a yearly, one-time cost."
"While Splunk is more expensive than other solutions, we would still choose it because of its capabilities."
"Splunk should be able to integrate with other product using the free version."
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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

VS
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…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Nov 17, 2021
Nov 17, 2021
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 have problems somewhere or if we are not getting the flow we expect. It is very easy to search for queries and events and then do analysis. The flexibility of the search capability is extremely valua...
See 2 answers
Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 22, 2021
Hi @Netanya Carmi​, Below are some comparisons on features and Integrations.  Azure Monitor Splunk Full observability into your applications, infrastructure, and network. It provides sophisticated tools for collecting and analyzing telemetry that allow you to maximize the performance and availability of your cloud and on-premises resources and applications; Search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data. Splunk Inc. provides the leading platform for Operational Intelligence. Customers use Splunk to search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data.                                    IT Infrastructure Monitoring Features Application Monitoring √ √ Bandwidth Monitoring √ X Capacity Planning √ X Configuration Change Management √ √ Data Movement Monitoring √ √ Health Monitoring √ X Multi-Platform Support √ X Performance Monitoring √ √ Point-in-Time Visibility √ X Reporting / Analytics √ √ Virtual Machine Monitoring √ X                                                 Integrations Squadcast √ √ Amazon EKS X √ Amazon Redshift X √ Amazon Web Services (AWS) X √ Azure DevOps Services √ X Azure Logic Apps √ X Azure Stack √ X Beats √ X CMS Hub X √ CyberOne X √
Nov 17, 2021
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 have problems somewhere or if we are not getting the flow we expect. It is very easy to search for queries and events and then do analysis. The flexibility of the search capability is extremely valuable. Splunk works well with other solutions. It is very easy to set up and very straightforward to deploy. The more data you process with Splunk, the more expensive it gets; an improved pricing model is needed. It would be great if Splunk had more SIEM functionality with better customization and a better ticket tool. The on-premises scaling is a bit more limited than on the cloud. Splunk currently has some limited default rules and customizations. If they could concentrate more on compliance and security information, that would be an added bonus. Azure Monitor has made it significantly easier for us to monitor applications and infrastructure for possible problems. This solution offers a survey of surveillance in real time and a very helpful dashboard. Azure Monitor, which is integrated with Azure DevOps, has good load gathering and very good analytics. We get useful alerts with Azure Monitor that make recommendations about the security and the platform. There should be more specific detail about where problems lie. Azure Monitor is lacking somewhat in vulnerability assessment; this aspect could be better. Their automation also needs some improvement. From gathering metrics from more applications to getting processes quickly started when something goes down, automation should be better. Conclusion: For us, Splunk is the better solution. We use Splunk to search, monitor, analyze, and visualize machine data, which it does very well. The dashboard is very intuitive. The log collection and log management tools are very good. We find Splunk’s search capability to be very powerful and flexible. Splunk can access any kind of data and there is no limitation to the kind of structured or unstructured data you can extract. Our team also liked that Splunk offers better integration with more solutions.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor could improve by adding capabilities for data observability and integrating more tightly with their data platform components.
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about Splunk?
There are a lot of third-party applications that can be installed.
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.