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IBM Watson for Cyber Security 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

IBM Watson for Cyber Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
51st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
303
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Watson for Cyber Security is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.8%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Elena Stefanovska - PeerSpot reviewer
Knowledgeable support, reliable, and useful compliance policies
IBM Watson for Cyber Security can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud and it is used as a SIEM solution The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add…
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 most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add them in the next release."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very stable."
"The most valuable feature of this product is innovation, where the research and upgrading of technology never ends."
"The customer support is very good."
"Three features stand out for me: the SDK for writing Python, the customizable and adaptable diagnostic dashboard, and the optimizer for collecting data."
"This solution helps us increase our productivity."
"Scalability-wise, the tool is awesome since you can add or reduce your resources in an easy way."
"Its usability is the best part. It is easy for our developers to use if they want to search their logs, etc."
"The most useful feature for me is the ability to create different kinds of alerts and set a different kind of denominator that will capture the real event. That is helpful for a power user like me."
"The correlation search functions that generate all the notables are valuable. That can get pretty complicated, and it handles that pretty well."
"It has helped us look at modern technology, as well as penetrate our legacy systems, to see where the bottlenecks are."
"The alerts are very effective."
 

Cons

"They need to continue to build the AI capabilities."
"The dashboard could improve in IBM Watson for Cyber Security."
"This is an expensive product, so making it more cost-effective would be an improvement."
"In the future, I would like to see threat intelligence included."
"Features related to content management must be improved."
"I think the tech support response time could be a bit better. Sometimes I need to wait more than 24 hours for a response to my tickets."
"A lot of people are averse to using new tools so if they make it even more user-friendly than it already is, I think that could go a long way."
"This is a costly solution."
"The GUI could be improved to include some of the capabilities that other BI solutions have. The layout is a little restrictive where you can’t resize all the panels to exactly how you would like them without tweaking some XML code."
"Licensing costs can be a barrier for those with limited budgets."
"The user experience could be improved."
"Better directions on search head clusters."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very simple to license and is priced well."
"The price of this solution should be lower, although I understand why IBM charges a premium price."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"Splunk is not free."
"While licensing can be a concern, there are ways to reduce the licensing costs including filtering some events."
"Splunk ES is quite expensive compared to some products on the market."
"The licensing model can be expensive, but the value it provides is significant."
"I've heard Splunk is often preferred over other options, but the cost can be prohibitive for smaller organizations."
"The Splunk licensing is high."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive but the solution is equipped with a lot of features."
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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
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Media Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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

Information Not Available
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 IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.