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Microsoft Sentinel 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Sentinel enhances security and efficiency, offering cost savings and quick returns through automation and advanced analytics.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk Enterprise Security enhances visibility, streamlines operations, and supports real-time decisions, improving efficiency and security in large-scale environments.
Microsoft Azure was not fitting for short-term cost savings but promised a better ROI over three to five years for medium to large companies.
Splunk's cost is justified for large environments with extensive assets.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Users mostly praise Microsoft's responsive Sentinel support but note delays and access issues for advanced technical assistance.
Sentiment score
6.7
Splunk Enterprise Security support is mixed: knowledgeable at higher levels but variable with first-tier responses, praised online.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
When my team needs to escalate issues to Microsoft, especially for Microsoft Sentinel, the response is fast through their French entity.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
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
8.0
Microsoft Sentinel provides scalable, flexible security solutions with cloud-based efficiency, praised for cost-effective data integration and workload management.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Enterprise Security is scalable and effective for large deployments, though costs and planning are essential considerations.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
It is easy to scale.
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 Sentinel offers reliable performance with minimal downtime, efficiently managed maintenance, and occasional issues during extensive customization.
Sentiment score
7.9
Splunk Enterprise Security is reliable and adaptable, handling large data volumes with minimal downtime and robust performance.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
Sentinel's stability is great.
It provides a stable environment but needs to integrate with ITSM platforms to achieve better visibility.
It is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Sentinel needs better user-friendliness, integration, documentation, and cost-efficiency to enhance usability, scalability, and adoption.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs improved setup, GUI, user control, pricing, machine learning, and intuitive dashboards for better accessibility.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
Currently, we are happy to have a way in the middle with not so much cost, but it would be nice to have the ability to enhance the automation of workflows based on learned incidents.
We choose other solutions for basic monitoring due to better cost opportunities.
Splunk Enterprise Security would benefit from a more robust rule engine to reduce false positives.
What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel.
Data retention can be better. If we want to look at the data for five months or six months, that is not available to us. We only have a history of 20 or 30 days.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Sentinel's pay-as-you-go model suits enterprises on Microsoft but raises cost concerns for others, especially with data ingestion.
Splunk Enterprise Security is costly but valued for features and scalability, offering significant ROI with careful data management.
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
We already had the necessary licensing for Sentinel, so we didn't need to spend extra money.
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
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 Sentinel excels with SOAR playbooks, AI automation, and integration, enhancing threat detection and response in a unified interface.
Splunk Enterprise Security enhances threat detection with fast data retrieval, customizable visualizations, and seamless third-party integration for efficient operations.
Custom workbooks are valuable. It is one of the crucial points in dealing with potential security threats in an automated way without requiring too much manpower.
The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection, response, and the knowledge base for investigation.
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
They have approximately 50,000 predefined correlation rules.
Splunk Enterprise Security's most valuable features are its stability and the robust Splunk Search Processing Language.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
305
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.5%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.8%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Sep 01, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

KrishnanKartik - PeerSpot reviewer
Every rule enriched at triggering stage, easing the job of SOC analyst
It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it. In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, you can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer. The SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work. And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel. That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free
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.
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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
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
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 ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
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...
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...
What do you like most about Splunk?
There are a lot of third-party applications that can be installed.
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
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 Sentinel vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,194 professionals have used our research since 2012.