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Elastic Security vs syslog-ng comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Security
Ranking in Log Management
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (16th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (8th)
syslog-ng
Ranking in Log Management
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 5.0%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 3.0%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Gajewski Marek - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 13, 2024
Provides good anomaly detection and connectivity reporting
I use Elastic Security to aggregate all logs from different devices in one place. It works pretty well and provides one overview of everything The solution's most valuable features are anomaly detection and connectivity reporting. Elastic Security also has many automation capabilities, which can…
RyanVargas - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 13, 2023
It's a user-friendly open-source solution that can replace or augment a commercial product in some cases
I rate syslog-ng 10 out of 10. It's free and easy to use. It has built-in tools that help us index the various logs sent to it. It's a solid log product. If you're looking for a SIEM solution, syslog-ng will work as a stopgap measure at beginning of the project. It can also work as an injector for a true SIEM solution. You can send all the logs to syslog-ng and forward all the data to the SIEM solution after you've cleaned up the data and got the pertinent information. It's a good front end for a commercial SIEM solution, which becomes more expensive as you load more data into it. I would highly recommend syslog-ng for that use case. However, if you lack the expertise, you might need to go with a cloud-based SIEM instead. You need some in-house expertise or an outside consultant to manage it and set it up.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What customers found most valuable in Elastic Security feature-wise is the search capability, in particular, the way of writing the search query and the speed of searching for results."
"The stability of the solution is good."
"The solution has a good community surrounding it for lots of helpful documentation for troubleshooting purposes."
"ELK documentation is very good, so never needed to contact technical support."
"It is the best open-source product for people working in SO, managing and analyzing logs."
"I can look at events from more than one source across multiple different locations and find patterns or anomalies. The machine learning capabilities are helpful, and I can create rules for notifications to be more proactive rather than responding after something has gone wrong."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the prevention methods and the incident alerts."
"It's a good platform and the very best in the current market. We looked at the Forester report from December 2022 where it was said to be a leader."
"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."
"Syslog-ng provides easy access to all my logs. It helps me show managers and other clients precisely where an incident occurred. I also like it because you can integrate syslog-ng with multiple solutions to allow real-time monitoring."
"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."
"For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior."
"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."
 

Cons

"If the documentation were improved and made more clear for beginners, or even professionals, then we would be more attracted to this solution."
"We set up a cron job to delete old logs so that we wouldn't hit a disk space issue. Such a feature should be available in the UI, where old logs can be deleted automatically. (Don’t know if this feature is already there)."
"This solution cannot do predictive maintenance, so we have to build our own modules for doing it."
"One thing they could add is a quick step to enable users who don't have a solid background to build a dashboard and quickly search, without difficulty."
"The setup process is complex. You need a solid working knowledge of networking, operating systems, and a little programming."
"We had issues with scalability. Logstash was not scaling and aggregation was getting delayed. We moved to Fluentd making our stack from ELK to EFK."
"There isn't really a very good user experience. You need a lot of training."
"Elastic Security's maintenance is hard and its scalability is a challenge. There are complications in scaling and upgrading. The solution needs to also provide periodic upgrade checks."
"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."
"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."
"It's hard to find people who know how to use syslog-ng. I often find problems with configurations, and solutions aren't integrated correctly with syslog-ng. For example, there might be data with extra decimals, or the collector agents are incorrectly named. It isn't a problem with the solution; it's a lack of professionals."
"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."
"The filtering has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is in the middle. I think it is not an expensive experience if we compare it with big names, for example, QRadar, and also Oxide. I think Elastic Security is quite cheap. I would rate the pricing of this solution a five out of ten."
"The base product is open-source but if you need advanced security features then you need to pay for the subscription. Elastic Security's price is reasonable in some cases and in other cases it's not."
"I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10."
"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."
"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."
"Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"There is no charge for using the open-source version."
"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."
"Syslog-ng is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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?
Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution.
What do you like most about syslog-ng?
For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for syslog-ng?
The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with one being expensive and ten being cheap.
What needs improvement with syslog-ng?
There is room for improvement in terms of observability. Additionally, a possible new feature could be Kafka integration.
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. syslog-ng and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,763 professionals have used our research since 2012.