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McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator vs Splunk SOAR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 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

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk SOAR
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is 0.5%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk SOAR is 7.2%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

DavidJones7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers automation alert features with easy integrations and impressive scalability
I would rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. There are a few technical challenges with the deployment, but it can easily solved by an experienced professional but not by a beginner user of the tool. The complete implementation and migration to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator will take around three months. If someone is using a software platform already with implemented use cases in their environment, it might be difficult to implement the same use cases when the customer is migrating to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. The conditions and prior alert settings needs to be accurate when migrating to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, otherwise false positive alerts might get generated.
Shubham Sinha. - PeerSpot reviewer
Helped eliminate repetitive and redundant tasks, but custom functions and reporting need a lot of work
The visibility of the solution’s playbook viewer depends on the right you assign to the analyst. SOAR has the flexibility to distinguish between the roles of analyst and owner. If the analyst's role is to just work on a ticket, they cannot view the playbook design platform. That is limited to the owner. That can be both a good and bad thing. A major problem I have faced in SOAR's rights distribution is roles and responsibilities. Suppose I am initially granted user rights or analyst rights, but later on, I also get admin rights. SOAR is unable to amend the limitations of my role. I raised a support ticket with Splunk about this. They said it's a bug in their 5.3.5 version. To fix this, I had to reinstall the entire platform from scratch, just to amend the rights and responsibilities of one role. This bug was not fixed. Also, the latest GUI is terrible. The previous one was better. Another point is that while using Splunk SOAR in an investigation is not difficult, there are some complex parameters. We have SOAR case management, but the licensing is going to put a big hole in your pocket. Also, there is an issue with investigation node addition. When you are doing node additions you cannot grant the entire environment to have SOAR visibility into the incident. So when you integrate it with an ITSM tool, like ServiceNow or Jira for ticketing purposes, there is a challenge. When you do nodes for investigation on a regular basis, sometimes it does not update our ServiceNow platform, which is terrible. It is a redundant activity for an analyst to update that in the case management as well as in the ITSM tool. Although SOAR provides integration, the functionality of investigation and nodes is terrible when it comes to integration. An additional area for improvement is custom function creation. It's terrible. A newbie cannot create custom functions right away. They would require a solid understanding first. Also, the reporting is really awful. If I want to do a report for a customized time period, such as the last three days or the last four days, or from the 10th to the 12th of June, that is not available in SOAR at all. That kind of feature is available in Cortex XSOAR. Reporting is a real challenge.

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 feature of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is agent communication."
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator's performance is good."
"The security is a key feature and the console is very user friendly."
"You have to have some experience, however, it's pretty simple to understand."
"It is a highly scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"I really like the auditing component because it really looks at exactly what has happened on the network."
"The central manager policy means we have almost all client modules in one solution."
"The valuable feature of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is the management of the policies."
"I like the way Splunk interacts with various systems via the API. The ability to integrate Splunk with our ticketing system has been an immense help because we can maintain our workflow while blending Splunk with our support desk and other ways that we track work."
"When you design a playbook, you can integrate multiple log sources and define rules... After that, the platform automatically compiles all these activities and, based on the results, the analyst only has to indicate whether the result is a true or false positive. That reduces the time and effort involved."
"Splunk SOAR's extensive library of pre-built integrations allows it to connect with a vast array of popular security and IT applications, streamlining workflows across our existing security stack."
"Splunk has many features that make work easier, and it's simple to implement in a large production environment. Splunk collects a massive amount of data from cloud servers and handles it perfectly."
"The customization of the playbook in Splunk SOAR is very beneficial."
"My understanding is the initial setup isn't too hard."
"The most valuable features are the Splunk SOAR apps and playbooks."
"The most valuable feature is the API connector, depending on how it's formatted and who made the actual app offering for it. The REST API is my favorite component. It's very easy to use. The filters are also really valuable. Those are the two primary features but I enjoy using the rest of it."
 

Cons

"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator could improve by supporting container microservices, such as Docker and Kubernetes."
"While there are bugs and a few functionality issues, it is just a matter of raising them with the support team. However, support is part of the problem as well. You want everything to be seamless in a perfect world, but the support is spread across different countries. They have Level 1, 2, and 3. Level 1 is most likely in a developing country. They don't provide the best service."
"The issues with the integration capabilities of the product, specifically the ones that are deployed on an on-premises model, need to be improved."
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator support has been helpful. However, sometimes when I raise the case they take a while to answer. For example, the last time I used them it took them two weeks to reply back by email. No one has contacted me back since. They should improve their service."
"There should be more insights and completeness into the cyber kill chain, similar to CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. It just seems a little outdated in being 100% signature-based without all of the insights and protections that come with CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. Overall, they've got some catching up to do if they plan to compete in the comprehensive EDR space."
"The solution could improve the EDR component in many areas, such as the zero-day and persistent threats. The implementation is also complex for this feature."
"The areas of concern where improvements are needed are related to the product's assignment policy and tag assignment, where users can assign the policies with the help of tags and sort out the systems."
"They have to do something to make the solution more resilient or recoverable from power failure events, which may include creating their own database."
"And most of the challenges that I have faced with the solution can be found in the documentation itself."
"They can improve on what they are currently doing. They can provide more playbooks or at least template playbooks that are in their repository."
"We've had trouble implementing the solution with Microsoft products. There seems to be an integration gap."
"Some of the training materials are on a basic level."
"Splunk SOAR can improve IoT/OT security-related case studies or your use cases. Their integration with identity and access management (IAM) solutions is a bit shaky. They don't have good integration with a lot of IAM solutions. They do have good capability in terms of user access management internally, but even with privileged user access, they have a good module. However, if they have to integrate with solutions, such as CyberArk or IBM IAM solutions they are lacking, the visibility of user access is not that much."
"While there have been improvements to the investigation process, particularly with the playbook data, the current log review method is cumbersome."
"have put a number of ideas on the ideas.splunk.com site for feature requests for the Splunk SOAR product. I posted one of them about three years ago, which finally got implemented in the latest release that just got announced, so the time to implement new features and things like that is a little bit concerning."
"Unfortunately, not all of our analysts are iPhone users or iOS users. The mobile app is only supported on iOS. Our analysts who have Android do not have that benefit. That would be a nice thing to have so that we can have it across the board and not just for iOS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an expensive solution"
"There is a license required to use this solution. If we use the additional components, such as DLP encryption, there is an additional cost. However, it is similar to a separate product altogether. If you want to use that or not, it is optional, but when you use it, it will cost you additional pricing."
"It is attractively priced. It is a fraction of what we're going to pay for CrowdStrike or SentinelOne, but it only has a fraction of the capabilities as well."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"McAfee tries to package different things into different products, then sell them as different products with different licenses. They just split everything up into multiple things. That's just their sales pitch and how they do it."
"For large enterprise companies, the price should be alright, but for small businesses, the uptake might be slow because, for these clients, the price doesn't look very attractive."
"This solution is priced in the mid-range."
"Compared to other Antivirus products, the cost of this solution is a bit high."
"In my opinion, the price is high, but if you want good products, you have to be willing to pay for them."
"The cost is high and the licensing is on an annual basis."
"The tool is not cheap."
"The licensing cost is reasonable."
"It's very overpriced because it is based on the number of users. There is no bulk licensing."
"We renewed it this year. This year was the first time there was a dramatic increase in the price. It was kind of non-negotiable. It was just a high increase. We had internal communications, and it was definitely a surprise to us. In a short time frame, we renewed it this year. Prices are going up everywhere, but they are not always justifiable, at least not to our eyes. The pricing this year was definitely a big shock."
"I found the price of Splunk SOAR to be good."
"While I can't confirm the exact pricing, some colleagues have mentioned that Splunk SOAR may be on the costlier side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Mcafee's MVision ePO or ePolicy Orchestrator?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Mcafee's MVision ePO or ePolicy Orchestrator network security software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Mcafee's ePolicy O...
What do you like most about McAfee MVISION ePO?
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator's performance is good.
What do you like most about Splunk Phantom?
Splunk SOAR's quick response to incidents is the most valuable part.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Phantom?
Splunk SOAR is affordable cost-wise only, but not competitive from a technical perspective compared to Palo Alto SOAR and FortiSOAR.
What needs improvement with Splunk Phantom?
The creation of playbooks is complex in Splunk SOAR ( /categories/security-orchestration-automation-and-response-soar ), and the number of integrations needs enhancement. Although it enhances alert...
 

Also Known As

McAfee ePO, ePolicy Orchestrator, Intel Security ePolicy Orchestrator, McAfee MVISION ePO
Phantom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brelje & Race, Cognizant, Sutherland Global Services, Eagle Rock Energy, Arab National Bank, Bank Central Asia, Kleberg Bank, Leading Mexican Bank, SF Police Credit Union, Macquarie Telecom, Seagate Technology, Blackburn & Darwen Council, California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, IRCEP, Major U.S. State Government, State of Alaska, State of Colorado, Cemex, Deutsche Edelstahlwerke
Recorded Future, Blackstone
Find out what your peers are saying about McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator vs. Splunk SOAR and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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