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ServiceNow Security Operations 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

ServiceNow Security Operations
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (2nd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (9th)
Splunk SOAR
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Security Operations is 3.8%, down from 4.0% 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

KishoreKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
A low-cost and open-source tool for incident and change management
If we encounter challenges while deploying, we raise incidents. These incidents are categorized by priority: high, medium, and low. We assign an incident number and notify the relevant teams to address the issue. For instance, if we experience a problem with Cloud services or any other issue, we…
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

"​Integration to other security tools allows for a consolidated view of all vulnerabilities, incidents, etc. for all sorts of leverage in a single platform to assess governance risk and compliance as well as an enhanced, enriched intelligence.​"
"The SOAR module of ServiceNow Security Operations is the most valuable feature"
"The ease of use is great."
"Multiple projects use the ServiceNow tool because it is a low-cost and open-source tool."
"ServiceNow is a convenient platform to raise tickets, and the respective support team will contact us to resolve any issues."
"We refer to the setup and installation guide provided by ServiceNow. They have good documentation, which makes it easier to handle the process."
"It's stable."
"What I found most valuable in ServiceNow Security Operations is that it's very useful for any incoming vulnerability. For example, if my team finds any vulnerability on servers such as the CA and CMDB integrated with ServiceNow Security Operations, my team can make some changes. My team can map the vulnerabilities found on the CA server, make the changes required, and resolve the vulnerabilities before the system is attacked. You can avoid vulnerability attacks through ServiceNow Security Operations, so this is the best feature of the solution. ServiceNow Security Operations is beneficial mainly for vulnerability response and engagement purposes."
"The most valuable feature is the risk-based access control."
"I'm just a beginner on the solution and it's pretty easy for me to use."
"I have found all the security automation platform features of Splunk SOAR to be good. The Automation playbook development is highly useful."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its searchability and ease of action on the logs. I can easily search within the logs and take action on them, and I can trace them back to my environment because the way the logs are written is very helpful for us."
"Splunk integrates with so many products. It provides us with good information for us to be able to do our jobs."
"Surprisingly, the mobile app is valuable because it is very convenient for our on-call analysts to respond and get alerted to security alerts and events wherever they are. We are able to harness the power of Splunk SOAR and everything that we are doing, and we are also able to alert our on-call analysts 24/7. From their mobile phone, they can respond to those alerts."
"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."
 

Cons

"In future releases, I would like to add a follow-up and reminder feature. For the tickets in our queue, we could set reminders. This would help us prioritize older tickets before moving on to new ones."
"An area for improvement I observed in ServiceNow Security Operations is the need to maintain correct CMDB data because if you're unable to do this, you can't perfectly maintain the vulnerability data. CMDB data in ServiceNow Security Operations needs to be accurate. As I've been working on ServiceNow Security Operations for only seven months, I still need more time to try all its modules before I can give recommendations regarding additional features I'd like to see in the solution."
"The threat intelligence module needs a better dashboard."
"It doesn't interact with things very well."
"They should stick to the roadmap and continue to build plugins and integrations with other third parties, enhance the UI, and enhance the reporting. It's all good. They should just continue enhancing the releases."
"There is room for improvement in terms of developer support and documentation."
"Customer awareness and understanding of ServiceNow's SecOps capabilities could be improved."
"One area for improvement for the product is the need to tailor and alter some codes for customization, which can cause issues during upgrades. It does not support customized operations."
"The pricing could be a bit more reasonable. It would be great if it were feasible for smaller organizations."
"Improving the integration ecosystem can raise the quality of the bottom tier of the integrations so that they can work better out of the box."
"While there have been improvements to the investigation process, particularly with the playbook data, the current log review method is cumbersome."
"Various aspects of the playbook development process itself can be optimized."
"In the beginning, we couldn't find any specific documents for every function. It wasn't easy to navigate to what we needed."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with the UI."
"SOAR is probably the most unreliable product Splunk has and that's because most of it is content driven from what you put into it. There are certain parts of it that have a little bit of difficulty at volume too. It's always changing. There is new stuff coming out for it that's going to make it a little bit better, but it does have some drawbacks."
"The solution must provide more AIOps to improve predictability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you're going to implement it on your own, there would be internal costs. If you're going to implement it through a contractor or consultant, you have to pay for that."
"This product is a good value for the money."
"The product is more expensive than other solutions."
"It is an expensive product."
"Compared to competitor tools, ServiceNow Security Operations is more affordable"
"The solution is more expensive than BMC Remedy, the other ITSM tool available in the market."
"In my opinion, the price is high, but if you want good products, you have to be willing to pay for them."
"The licensing cost is reasonable."
"When we first purchased our Splunk SOAR license, it was based on an event-count model. It was based on the number of events. I had strong opinions at the time that automation should not be stifled by the amount of automation you can accomplish, so the previous structure was not as beneficial for us. Later that year, we got told or saw at a conference that they announced user-based pricing. We are now in a renewal period, so we migrated to a user-based license model, which is more appropriate for us so that we no longer have to worry about stifling our automation based on the quantity."
"The cost is high and the licensing is on an annual basis."
"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."
"The tool is not cheap."
"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
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software 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 do you like most about ServiceNow Security Operations?
The most valuable aspect of working with ServiceNow is its meaningful and feature-rich product.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Security Operations?
The product is more expensive than other solutions like Archer but offers more features, making the pricing justifiable.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Security Operations?
I cannot comment on areas for improvement because it is not within my core expertise. Also, the developers may have more insight into this aspect.
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

No data available
Phantom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DXC Technology, Freedom Security Alliance, Prime Therapeutics, Seton Hall University, York Risk Services
Recorded Future, Blackstone
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Security Operations vs. Splunk SOAR and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.