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ELK Kibana vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

ELK Kibana
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
386
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

KJ
Engineer at Raytheon Technologies
Visualization tools are optimized providing us with increased flexibility
One area that could be improved is security. Being an open source product, if you want to add security, if you want to add authentication, you've got to use a third party plugin that may or may not cost you, or alternatively upgrade to their subscription service, which is a downside as well. I think the types of visualizations are nice, but I think there's room to add more without having to go to third party plugins to do that. Just comparing the total number of visualizations that it provides compared to Grafana, you can see that it's lacking. The UI experience isn't as rich as it is with Grafana or certain other tools. I would like to see better authentication options, typical authentication options, like active directory and LDAP as well, just a richer UI with more graph type options.
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Bank of America
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of this solution is fantastic, as it has not failed us for months and we use it extensively."
"Having a tool where you can find logs that were generated months ago, and being able to search over a long period of time, is great."
"The user interface is very good, and the data visualization is simple and user-friendly."
"The automatic update of the graphs from a dashboard is very convenient."
"Some visualization tools are optimized for time series like Kibana, which allows you to do both, and we like the flexibility of being able to analyze different types of data."
"The optimization and flexibility of visualization tools."
"The automatic update of the graphs from a dashboard is very convenient."
"The solution is the market leader."
"One key advantage of Splunk over competitors like IBM QRadar is its superior device integration capabilities."
"It's extremely scalable. It's a very robust solution and certainly has the capability of handling far bigger data requirements than a lot of the other tools. Generally what ends up happening with me is that my clients tend, for the most part, to be mid-tier organizations where the cost of that solutions would be accompanying requirements for people just becomes way too prohibitive. Especially considering the model that they use for costing, which is based on the volume of data. Of course, they're going to put everything including the Coke machine as the ability to collect data off of it, because of course the more they can put through the tool the more money they make."
"It allows us to digest the information, the data, the different data streams, so we can make decisions based upon information that we receive, and it is pretty robust."
"Splunk has saved our organization time by resolving problems in a quicker timeframe."
"The most valuable features of the solution are it is straightforward to use and the documentation is good for finding out how to get the data you are looking for."
"This solution is the best security solution."
"Splunk was good for us because of the support, the documentation, the scalability, the stability."
 

Cons

"Security could be improved thereby avoiding the necessity of a third party plugin."
"Having a kind of wizard that would help you when you are typing your search would make it easier and quicker to refine your search, and ultimately find what you are looking for."
"One area that could be improved is security. Being an open source product, if you want to add security, if you want to add authentication, you've got to use a third party plugin that may or may not cost you, or alternatively upgrade to their subscription service, which is a downside as well."
"This solution should allow the user to combine two indices into one graph."
"Having a kind of wizard that would help you when you are typing your search would make it easier and quicker to refine your search, and ultimately find what you are looking for."
"Populating data sometimes is also difficult for the user."
"This solution should allow the user to combine two indices into one graph and it should provide a unique count."
"Splunk needs to be able to hold more days of data. At the moment it only holds three months of data."
"Splunk isn't appropriate for smaller companies. It's too expensive."
"There's been a big push for SBC compute over the ingestion model, which will hamper us."
"Splunk has a steeper learning curve, making it feel less user-friendly."
"They can incorporate the SOAR solution within the actual product so that we do not require two different products, two different installations, and two different pricing methods. In regards to UBA, I am familiar with the UBA that existed two years ago. I am not updated about it today, but two years ago, UBA required such an amount of data that from a cost perspective, it was not worth it. When you compare it to what you get out of the box with Microsoft Sentinel without additional costs, there is no match."
"Splunk could enhance its services by providing more comprehensive professional assistance aimed at optimizing our investment."
"For instance, if a DLP operations analyst accesses the platform, it should guide them to navigate predefined content for their role. That's something I've already mentioned to them, and I'm eager to see what happens next."
"The product could be cheaper."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We have an unlimited one, and we pay yearly, but I don't know how much it costs. Previously, I worked for a startup, and when they started building it up, it was complicated for them because they didn't have the budget for that many licenses. It was very costly for them. So, startups might find it a little bit problematic because of the licensing, but for bigger companies, there is no issue."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive. I would rate the cost an eight out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"It is pretty straightforward and based on the sizing. If I compare it with other competitors, it makes sense."
"The pricing depends on the bandwidth of an organization and is good compared to some SIEM tools. IBM, for example, is quite costly. But Microsoft Sentinel is notably cheaper."
"It can be tough to determine if you are getting all of the value out of your investment at times."
"Some of the insights that we have obtained as a part of using Splunk have greatly helped us in increasing our revenue in terms of selling our products."
"While licensing can be a concern, there are ways to reduce the licensing costs including filtering some events."
"I've heard Splunk is often preferred over other options, but the cost can be prohibitive for smaller organizations."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business116
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise269
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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

Sprint, Grab, Volkswagen, Autopilot, Voyages-SNCF.com, Just Eat, Accenture, Dell, Verizon Wireless, Kaidee, Green Man Gaming, Compare Group, Tango, Quizlet
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
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