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Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Change Auditor for Windows ...
Ranking in Log Management
38th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
305
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Change Auditor for Windows File Servers is 0.1%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.6%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

KF
Provides granular queries of security logs and real-time alerting helps me mitigate risks
The real-time alerting helps me mitigate risks. For example, someone adds a member to the domain admin group. We have an alert set up, so if someone does this unexpectedly, we get notified. Then, we can check and verify if the action is legitimate or a potential threat to the environment.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it can be fully integrated with Microsoft solutions and it doesn't impact the productivity order."
"In terms of features, the querying is great."
"The initial setup isn't overly complex."
"Correlation search, in general, is valuable because it allows us to search multiple data sources easily."
"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 graph visualization is the most valuable feature."
"Splunk's strength lies in its single-page view."
"The completeness of the solution is what we like the most."
"The most valuable feature is that it brings all of the components necessary to identify, analyze, and respond together."
"If properly built, I'm very impressed with the stability of Splunk ES."
 

Cons

"The customer service and support could improve their approach to questioning issues. They tend to ask questions one at a time, which creates a lot of back-and-forth communication."
"The pricing could be improved. It needs to be reduced."
"I feel the solution to be too slow."
"It's missing some features that other solutions have, such as the ability to upgrade the endpoint and perform endpoint universal forwarders from a deployment server instead of using a third-party solution, such as Puppet or Ansible."
"It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support."
"I've never had too many issues with the stability. Years ago we had indexes crash but that was more on us. We didn't understand how to properly size Splunk."
"Splunk Enterprise Security can be improved by including backup network detection and response and safe management to the paid platform."
"It works as intended for us, and we are getting everything that we need out of it. If anything, its initial setup can be improved a bit."
"While scheduled reports can be embedded, Splunk dashboard can not be embedded directly without enabling cross origin."
"Could be more user friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is per user. The cost is approximately $15/user on a yearly basis. If you need to, you can always upgrade as well."
"The price of Splunk is reasonable."
"It's definitely worth it."
"The license for Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive."
"It is expensive. I work for multiple clients. I am working for more than five clients, but most of the clients are switching from Splunk to Sentinel because of the cost. Even though Sentinel is very limited, clients are moving to Sentinel."
"The pricing seems good relative to the other vendors that we have had here. However, they need to find ways to be more flexible with the licensing and be able to deal with situations where we start generating more logs. Maybe having some controls in the Splunk interface to turn it off, so we don't have to change anything in our application."
"While some clients find the cost of Splunk Enterprise Security to be on the higher end, its pricing is comparable to other SIEM solutions."
"This product could use better pricing in general."
"It can be expensive, especially the licensing costs. However, there is added value in what it can do, not just log aggregation."
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842,194 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?
They've already made improvements! They have a tool called IT Security Search, which lets you perform queries outside of Change Auditor. It's much faster. This is a really good addition and helps u...
What is your primary use case for Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?
I use Change Auditor for Windows File Servers to log history. It's helpful when we have critical changes in Active Directory, like adding or removing items. I use it extensively for monitoring.
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 ...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dragon Capital, Howard County MD
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 Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,194 professionals have used our research since 2012.