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Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs Splunk SOAR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 8, 2024

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
7.4
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR enhances ROI through automation, integration, and efficient mature SOC processes, reducing investigation time.
Sentiment score
6.6
Splunk SOAR offers varied ROI, with notable time-saving but challenges in quantifying benefits and initial deployment for new users.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR support is knowledgeable but varies in response times and service quality, needing possible improvements.
Sentiment score
7.1
Splunk SOAR's improved customer service is praised for responsiveness and documentation, despite occasional slow telecom-related responses.
Splunk's technical support is very good and generally not needed often due to the stable environment.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is scalable, integrating well with APIs, though large deployments may face challenges and latency issues.
Sentiment score
7.1
Splunk SOAR is scalable, flexible, and resource-efficient, but some users face hardware bottlenecks at larger scales.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is stable and reliable, though minor bugs occur during updates and with oversized storage environments.
Sentiment score
7.5
Splunk SOAR is highly stable with minimal downtime, minor issues, and receives positive feedback for robust data performance.
Splunk SOAR provides a stable environment and technology.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSOAR requires easier setup, better IoT support, improved UI, more connectors, flexible pricing, and enhanced documentation.
Splunk SOAR users desire improved integration, better documentation, and user-friendly features for enhanced efficiency and usability.
The deployment requires integration and the development of integration modules.
Although it enhances alert handling, it still has a journey to compete with Palo Alto SOAR and FortiSOAR.
 

Setup Cost

Cortex XSOAR is seen as expensive yet valuable for security, with variable pricing and discounts post-Palo Alto acquisition.
Splunk SOAR's subscription pricing is seen as costly by some, but it offers valuable workflow automation and efficiency.
Splunk SOAR is affordable cost-wise only.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSOAR offers user-friendly automation, integration, and playbook creation with efficient remediation, security features, and AI-enhanced threat intelligence.
Splunk SOAR offers customizable playbooks, seamless integration, facilitates automation, enhances incident response, and improves user experience and efficiency.
Execution of automatic tasks for collecting, enriching, and correlating security events from hundreds of different technologies.
The customization of the playbook in Splunk SOAR is very beneficial.
 

Categories and Ranking

Palo Alto Networks Cortex X...
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (2nd)
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 March 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is 11.1%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk SOAR is 7.3%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user870255 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 15, 2018
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilSharma2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ability to multiple playbooks to fetch data from multiple firewalls and utomated several tasks, including vulnerability scans and SOCL (Security Orchestration, Automation
Recently, they started implementing microservices in XSOAR, which has improved quality and addressed previous issues. However, they should focus more on licensing costs. The user licensing fees are quite high. For example, I received a quote for XSOAR, and it was $12,000 per user per year. If you have a SOC team of 30 members/analysts, you're looking at a substantial expense. They should consider reducing these costs since this high pricing seems to be more about profit. So, there is room for improvement in the pricing. Moreover, the reporting and dashboard features are decent but could be improved. The user interface (UI) is quite heavy and takes time to load, which is a major drawback.
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.
report
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Answers from the Community

it_user870255 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018
I would not recommend Phantom or Demisto, but rather JASK! JASK is modernizing security operations to reduce organizational risk and improve human efficiency through technology consolidation, enhanced AI and machine learning. We are empowering the SOC analyst to focus on investigative and response work, rather than the onerous data ingestion, normalization, parsing, and alert discrimination th...
See 2 answers
CL
May 23, 2018
I would not recommend Phantom or Demisto, but rather JASK! JASK is modernizing security operations to reduce organizational risk and improve human efficiency through technology consolidation, enhanced AI and machine learning. We are empowering the SOC analyst to focus on investigative and response work, rather than the onerous data ingestion, normalization, parsing, and alert discrimination that is required to simply determine what is important. Purpose-built by the JASK team, proven in solving real-world SOC issues, the JASK Autonomous Security Operations Center (ASOC) Platform enhances threat detection and orchestration to improve contextual visibility, expose blind spots and initiate faster response times with advanced insights.
it_user889167 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 15, 2018
I would recommend CyberSponse. There is a reason why CyberSponse have been awarded Government and Military contracts over all the competition! Commerical customers need the same power and capability, why settle for anything less!
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
Even though customers often comment on the price, the potential savings come from managing a large number of security events with a limited number of analysts. This leads to economic advantages des...
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
The complexity of Cortex XSOAR has a trade-off with its versatility. The product can be tailored for each deployment to respond to specific customer needs, and this complexity may be seen as a down...
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?
I rate Splunk SOAR two out of 10 for affordability. Splunk is a fast enterprise tool, but it costs too much. At the same time, it's worth what we pay, in my opinion. We can efficiently perform all ...
What needs improvement with Splunk Phantom?
The dashboard could be improved and some other features. SOAR should integrate network capabilities, allowing us to also monitor the WLAN network. Splunk is also expensive and difficult for beginne...
 

Also Known As

Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
Phantom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
Recorded Future, Blackstone
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs. Splunk SOAR and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.