Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 29, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Cloud's operations s...
Ranking in Log Management
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (26th), Cloud Monitoring Software (24th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
303
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 8.7%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or BigQuery can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings.
Avinash Gopu. - PeerSpot reviewer
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 cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."
"It's easy to use."
"I like the monitoring feature."
"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"
"Splunk has facilitated the correlation of information security logs to look for incidents which could cause damage to the company's infrastructure, as well as financial losses from leaks."
"Without Splunk Enterprise Security, it would be difficult for us to manage and prioritize alerts. There's a potential to lose track of important notifications, and it's essential to our security that we do not miss anything. Splunk has improved our investigations because the reporting and dashboarding make things so much easier. We can provide weekly or monthly reports. I also like Splunk's ability to integrate."
"The scalability of the solution is amazing because it can collect a lot of data and you can have your own structure to monitor this data."
"Its compatibility with other SIEMS is very useful."
"What I really like is that even if you have already collected the data, you can extract fields and can build searches."
"The solution's most valuable feature is risk-based alerting, focusing on building out user risks for individuals throughout the enterprise."
"Its alerting is most valuable. We have alerts set up in our environment for certain attacks, such as an SQL injection attempt. We have a front-facing server for the website. It is out there, and anybody can access it. When those SQL injection attempts come in, we are able to detect that with the alert."
"We are much faster finding and addressing issues with Splunk."
 

Cons

"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"It could be even more automated."
"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
"The process of logging analytics can be improved"
"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."
"Splunk does not provide any default threat intelligence like Microsoft Sentinel, but you can integrate any third-party threat intelligence with Splunk. By default, no threat intelligence suite is there, whereas, with IBM QRadar or Microsoft Sentinel, the default feature of threat intelligence is there. It is free. If Splunk can provide a default threat intelligence suite, it would be better."
"The monitoring aspect of Splunk could be improved. We have to do some queries to get as much information as CrowdStrike or other solutions provide. If you run a big query, you will see a delay. That is the only concern we have because it will take some time if you query large data sets."
"The main issue that I have with it is that the field transformations sometimes overlap with those in Splunk Enterprise, and then you get permissions issues that lead to troubles."
"Queries are not always as easy or straightforward as they might be, so it can be difficult to figure out what you need to look for."
"The complexity could be worked on so that it's even easier and faster."
"The only improvement I am expecting is the cost of the licensing. Clients are going to other solutions just because of the cost."
"We'd like to see a more seamless cloud-based integration."
"Splunk Enterprise Security would benefit from a more robust rule engine to reduce false positives."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"The cost could be lower."
"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"It's a little bit expensive for a small to medium enterprise."
"Personnel costs are saved by not having to involve the domain developers from multiple teams when tracing a problem that spans multiple platforms."
"It is quite expensive."
"It is expensive. I used to buy it early on, but then they combined it into a higher-up organization. They buy it for multiple systems now. Last time, I paid around 60K for it. There is just the licensing fee. That's all."
"It can be expensive, especially the licensing costs. However, there is added value in what it can do, not just log aggregation."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is competitive."
"It is a bit costly."
"Splunk Enterprise Security incurs a significant cost because of the amount of data we send, but we are fine with the value we're getting for that price."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
825,399 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
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?
If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.
What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?
I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.
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...
 

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
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 Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
825,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.