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NetWitness Platform 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

NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
22nd
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
23rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
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
IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.6%, down from 0.8% 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)
 

Featured Reviews

MdZaman - PeerSpot reviewer
Really scalable for enterprise customers
The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms. The API is nearly open and scalable, so the solution can integrate with many platforms. The solution has more than 200 log sources in the scalability to support, but this is its limit. Installation is pretty easy. However, there are a couple of modules involved, so it is not as easy as it could be. We are talking about a distributed module, not a single-module type. This is what makes things a bit complex, instead of easier. I rate it as a seven out of ten on its installation and configuration capabilities.
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

"Alerting Module: It provides real-time event processing language on all the logs/packets stream for advanced alerting, i.e., using SQL LIKE statements."
"Offers a good wireless feature."
"The most valuable feature is the security that it provides."
"NetWitness Platform offers flexibility for deployment and robust integration capabilities."
"It's quite economical compared to other solutions in the market."
"The most valuable feature is the correlation. It can report in real-time and monitor the management."
"What we are mainly using are the RSA concentrator, RSA Decoder, Archiver, Broker, and Log Decoder."
"Performance and reporting are very good."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ability to transact in the cloud and its ability to onboard data easily with minimum connectors."
"The solution's most valuable features are the granularity and analysis of the logs."
"Splunk has give us the capability to easily track problems and their status."
"The log aggregation is great."
"Splunk setup is easy and straightforward. ​"
"Splunk has machine learning which is a valuable feature."
"Splunk's advantage is its search capability. Its search is notably faster. With Splunk, I can search easily on keywords. That is great."
"You can run reports against multiple devices at the same time. You are able to troubleshoot a single application on a thousand servers. You can do this with a single query, since it is very easy to do."
 

Cons

"There are instances where you try to run the reports and then it does not give you the desired outcome."
"The initial setup is very complex and should be simplified."
"If we have the ability to run a dynamic analysis through malware in the same suite, it would be great to have a sandbox solution to analyze malware through dynamic analysis."
"The documentation is not as structured as I would like, personally, and I think that it can be improved and made much more user-friendly."
"The user interface is a little bit difficult for new users and it needs to be improved."
"Technical support could be improved."
"Its technical support could be better."
"The initial setup was complex because it takes a lot of time to complete the implementation."
"Splunk could add more ways to manage archiving and storage. There isn't a web interface. You can do this on the SaaS version, but the on-premise platform doesn't have this option. It has other things but no option for remote NAS. I would like to have a personal web interface where I can specify how long logs should be stored. To have this readily available on the web, you need to adjust some settings on the backend. That is tricky."
"Delays in responses from the technical team can pose challenges for both vendors and clients, especially considering that Splunk applications and machine solutions are critical assets."
"This is a costly solution."
"Splunk could enhance its offerings by incorporating modules for network detection and response and fraud management, along with improving its threat intelligence management capabilities."
"I would like more assistance with use cases and help with teaching us how to use it once it's installed."
"Adding custom visualization in Splunk has been improved over the years but can still be made better by integrating more and more JavaScript visualization sources."
"I would like to see an updated dashboard. The dashboard is a little out-of-date. It could be made prettier."
"Make it easier to include roles and user controls, as it is horrible now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to the competition, the is price is not that high."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
"My customers have found the price of the solution to be high."
"It is economical than other solutions."
"We have an unlimited one, and we pay yearly, but I don't know how much it costs. Previously, I worked for a startup, and when they started building it up, it was complicated for them because they didn't have the budget for that many licenses. It was very costly for them. So, startups might find it a little bit problematic because of the licensing, but for bigger companies, there is no issue."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"The pricing depends on the bandwidth of an organization and is good compared to some SIEM tools. IBM, for example, is quite costly. But Microsoft Sentinel is notably cheaper."
"ROI is estimated at saving my team roughly 10 to 12 man hours per week in troubleshooting for our company as well as what our profits had been from our services of installing, configuring, and supporting other clients with the product."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is an expensive solution."
"While Splunk is more expensive than other solutions, we would still choose it because of its capabilities."
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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
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
6%
Insurance Company
6%
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

What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The product price was reasonable for my region and the market.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
From an improvement perspective, the NetWitness Platform needs to release new features and improve in areas like log correlation. The tool needs to have easier integrations with the cloud. Building...
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

RSA Security Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
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 NetWitness Platform vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,194 professionals have used our research since 2012.