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Microsoft Defender XDR 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR offers cost savings, enhanced security, and efficiency by consolidating measures, reducing cyberattack losses, and streamlining processes.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk Enterprise Security cuts costs and boosts efficiency with automation, threat response, and real-time insights, enhancing user satisfaction.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
For smaller organizations, other products may provide better value for money.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR support varies; larger organizations benefit more, with issues in responsiveness and knowledge sharing for smaller companies.
Sentiment score
6.7
Splunk Enterprise Security's customer service is praised for knowledgeable support but needs improvement in response times and consistency.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
If you want to write your own correlation rules, it is very difficult to do, and you need Splunk's support to write new correlation rules for the SIEM tool.
The technical support for Splunk met my expectations.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR offers scalable solutions for diverse organizations, with strengths in cloud setups and dashboard management despite some challenges.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Enterprise Security scales effectively, handling large data volumes and diverse environments, though costs may increase with scalability.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues quickly resolved and high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.9
Splunk Enterprise Security is stable and reliable, but proper setup and careful capacity planning are crucial for optimal performance.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
It provides a stable environment but needs to integrate with ITSM platforms to achieve better visibility.
It is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scanning, better integration, simpler licensing, and improved automation for user-friendly threat management.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs better setup, integration, documentation, interfaces, access controls, data management, and pricing flexibility for improved user experience.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.
Splunk Enterprise Security would benefit from a more robust rule engine to reduce false positives.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender XDR is cost-effective with an E5 bundle but costly separately, influenced by complex licensing and geographic factors.
Splunk Enterprise Security's cost is seen as high, prompting calls for flexible pricing to suit different budgets and needs.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
The pricing is a little high, however, it is on par with other competitive tools in the market.
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
Splunk is priced higher than other solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender XDR offers seamless integration, advanced threat hunting, and AI protection, streamlining operations and reducing costs.
Splunk Enterprise Security offers robust data analysis, real-time alerts, and machine learning, enhancing threat detection and incident response.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
From an attack chain perspective, Defender XDR handles phishing and spam emails easily, while Defender for Endpoint manages endpoints effectively.
The email protection feature is the most valuable because our risks primarily lie there, and it seems to be the most popular target.
The Splunk Enterprise Security's threat-hunting capabilities have been particularly useful in later releases.
They have approximately 50,000 predefined correlation rules.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender XDR
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
303
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (1st), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Microsoft Defender XDR is designed for Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and holds a mindshare of 9.6%, up 7.4% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 10.8% mindshare, down 14.6% since last year.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
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.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) 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
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
It would be beneficial to reduce the number of clicks required to navigate between blades, as the current navigation and breadcrumb system can be a bit confusing. Some inconsistencies exist between...
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

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
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 Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
825,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.