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Elastic Security vs NetWitness Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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

Elastic Security
Ranking in Log Management
7th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (16th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (8th)
NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
22nd
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
23rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.7%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Nikhil-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Customizable with great dashboards but the premium support is poor
The initial setup can be complex if you don't have technical knowledge. However, once it is deployed, it works well. I'm not sure how long it took to deploy. I wasn't there when it was set up and configured. We have an internal team that handles deployment and maintenance. It doesn't require too many people to deploy. Five or six people would be enough. However, for 24/7 monitoring, you need to have someone always on it.
MdZaman - PeerSpot reviewer
Really scalable for enterprise customers
The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms. The API is nearly open and scalable, so the solution can integrate with many platforms. The solution has more than 200 log sources in the scalability to support, but this is its limit. Installation is pretty easy. However, there are a couple of modules involved, so it is not as easy as it could be. We are talking about a distributed module, not a single-module type. This is what makes things a bit complex, instead of easier. I rate it as a seven out of ten on its installation and configuration capabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash."
"The most valuable features are the speed, detail, and visualization. It has the latest standards."
"Elastic Security is very customizable, and the dashboards are very easy to build."
"The most valuable features of Elastic Security are it is open-source and provides a high level of security."
"Its flexibility is most valuable. We can have a number of scenarios, and we can get logs from anything. If we know how to use Logstash, we can tweak it in many ways. This makes the logging search on Elastic very easy."
"The most valuable feature for me is Discover."
"Enables monitoring of application performance and the ability to predict behaviors."
"I use the stack every morning to check the errors and it's just so clear. I don't see any disadvantage to using Logstash."
"NetWitness can be highly beneficial for incident detection and response."
"The packet capture aspect of it is a valuable feature because it is quite different from a traditional SIEM solution that only carries out investigations based on captured logs."
"Incident management is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are its ingestion of logs and raising of alerts based on those logs."
"NetWitness Platform is valuable for creating rules that the solution must detect."
"It gives the capability for the incident response team to correlate logs to identify any kind of problem like malware and incidents in a general sense, both for logs and packets."
"The most valuable feature is the correlation. It can report in real-time and monitor the management."
"The development of use cases on the SSA console is quite user friendly. This means that the security analyst or the researcher does not have to learn another language."
 

Cons

"The Integration module could be improved. It is a pain to build integration with any product. We have to do parking and so on. It's not like other commercial solutions that use profile integration. I would also see more detection features on the SIEM side."
"In terms of what could be improved with Elastic, in some use cases, especially on the advanced level, they are not ready made, so you'll have to write some scripts."
"We are paying dearly for the guy who is working on the ELK Stack. That knowledge is quite rare and hard to come by. For difficulty and availability of resources, I would rate it a five out of 10."
"The solution could offer better reporting features."
"Elastic Security can be a bit difficult to use if a person only has experience in SMBs with tools like Zoho. The product can also be difficult for those who have never dealt with query language."
"The tool should improve its scalability."
"Elastic Security could improve the documentation. It would help if they were more simple and clean."
"Sometimes, the solution isn't the easiest to use."
"The initial setup is complex. There are other solutions that are easier to implement."
"The log system is a bit complex and has room for improvement."
"More customizability is required, which is something that they need to improve on."
"The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms."
"Log aggregation is an issue with this solution because there are a huge number of alerts in a single instance."
"There are instances where you try to run the reports and then it does not give you the desired outcome."
"The system architecture is complex and sometimes it’s hard to troubleshoot potential problems."
"Sometimes, it gives me static when integrating Windows-based systems. It should produce a precise log of sorts as to where the problem is. For example, a few days ago because of the McAfee application firewall, I couldn't get access to the particular Windows machine. So, my team and I had to figure out by ourselves that there was a virus responsible for the obstacle. This solution should trigger a meaningful log or message indicating the reason the user or implementer can't get into the machine."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."
"The solution is free."
"It is easy to deploy, easy to use, and you get everything you need to become operational with it, and have nothing further to pay unless you want the OLED plugin."
"Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
"There is no charge for using the open-source version."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"Our license is for one year."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
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Comparison Review

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Feb 26, 2015
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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
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Insurance Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What do you like most about Elastic Security?
Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
Elastic Security is considered cost-effective, especially at lower EPS levels. However, a direct comparison was not made due to different pricing structures.
What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The product price was reasonable for my region and the market.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
From an improvement perspective, the NetWitness Platform needs to release new features and improve in areas like log correlation. The tool needs to have easier integrations with the cloud. Building...
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
RSA Security Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. NetWitness Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.