SolarWinds Security Event Manager vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

SolarWinds Security Event Manager vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

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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

SolarWinds Security Event M...

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

21st

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk Enterprise Security

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

303

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.8%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

Alex Kinyanjui

Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom

A stable and scalable solution that provide 24/7 monitoring

We have to protect customer data, including any PII, accessed via the internet terminal. Additionally, we need to monitor events from network devices and servers that may raise suspicion, allowing us to analyze them and determine what is occurring. SolarWinds affected your overall security costs. Considering the nature of our traffic, it has been very effective. We have proactively identified and addressed issues before they escalate into incidents. I've noticed a reduced investment in handling event-related cases with SolarWinds Security Event Manager. This reduction includes reducing human resources and the time required for teams to provide 24/7 monitoring. Consequently, there has been a significant decrease in costs. Additionally, the platform enables us to address issues before they escalate into incidents, thus preventing revenue leakage. As a result, the organization experiences reduced costs and avoids revenue leakage. Since the SolarWinds Security Event Manager implementation, the total budget allocated to security has been reduced by close to five percent. Initially, there was a heavy investment in that aspect, but we have observed this reduction in the allocated budget for the security team. Since implementing SolarWinds Security Event Manager, the team members' pressure has been reduced. They can now concentrate on more critical tasks and development, promoting growth within their department rather than solely focusing on incident monitoring. I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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ROBERT-CHRISTIAN

CTO Security & Resilience at Kyndryl

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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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"SolarWinds is effective for server, network, and log monitoring. It's also good for IP address management. We also have a patch manager, but we're still working on getting that operational."

"SolarWinds is easy to configure, and it provides timely alerts."

"It supports high availability, which is very helpful."

"The graphical user interface is very user-friendly. SolarWinds is a hybrid solution so you can use it across many platforms."

"The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers."

"SolarWinds Security Event Manager has been generally working well."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."

"It's extremely easy to deploy."

More SolarWinds Security Event Manager pros

"Splunk can extract all kinds of data. There's no limitation on what kind of structured and unstructured data one needs to extract — it can access any kind of data, including machine-generated data."

"Overall, Splunk is among the top three SIEM tools due to its capabilities and agility in bridging business analytics with security needs."

"We evaluated several solutions and selected Splunk due to the functionality and cost."

"The correlation search functions that generate all the notables are valuable. That can get pretty complicated, and it handles that pretty well."

"Splunk Enterprise Security offers valuable features like seamless integration and a SQL-standard Structured Query Language for easy searching."

"My customer was integrated with many third-party credentials and other threat sources as well. The integration part was seamless and easy. The rates for allocating valuable information and IOCs from different sources are also good."

"UBA, User Behavior Analytics, is a key feature."

"The solution allows easy gathering and ingestion of the data."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

Cons

"We have automated threat detection in the Alliance Security, Antoinette. However, if these features could be further enhanced, it would simplify my work, potentially allowing me to allocate more time to address complex issues."

"It can be difficult for users who are inexperienced with the solution."

"Under the new system, it is not upgradable the way they say. When you try to do an upgrade, it doesn't really work unless you dump everything and start from scratch. You lose a lot of your nodes. Whenever you set your nodes up and everything else, they don't want to bring those nodes back in, so you have to really go back and restructure all your nodes. I went from version 6.5 to version 6.6 and then to version 6.7. I then went to version 2019, and now it is version 2020. It would be good if we can upgrade without having to delete everything and start from scratch. They can maybe build more KPIs and other things for the dashboard. Some of the other systems already have built-in KPIs. SolarWinds is starting to catch up, but it is not there yet. They can include some of the business or industry standards for tracking the time, that is, the meantime to detect (MTTD) and the meantime to resolve (MTTR). They can also find a way to build a KPI that measures the number of instances of port scans experienced in a week or a month."

"The product should improve the ease with which you can create event alerts. They are not as hard now but you need to have an easier way."

"It won't tell you when your backups are failing, but it will give you hints when your database is running on full recovery."

"I don't think SolarWinds is scalable enough. It is somewhat limited when I need to deploy it across multiple environments in a distributed architecture."

"I think the customization area in the tool can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The reporting could be more robust. It can be a lot more granular and that will make it a lot more useful in comparison to how it is incorporated at the moment."

More SolarWinds Security Event Manager cons

"If you monitor too much, you can lose performance on your systems."

"It would be good if the solution had some kind of copilot to automate or help write correlation searches."

"Splunk Enterprise Security incurs a significant cost because of the amount of data we send, but we are fine with the value we're getting for that price."

"Splunk's ability to analyze malicious activities scores an 8 out of 10, but there's room for improvement. By analyzing emerging patterns, Splunk could identify and predict potential threats more effectively."

"The integration could be a bit better. They charge for certain integrations."

"Splunk is such a large product. Allowing it to be more easily used by people who have not had a lot of training on it would be an improvement."

"Being a SIEM solution with a centralized dashboard, we would like to have more options to customize it."

"The GUI could be improved to include some of the capabilities that other BI solutions have. The layout is a little restrictive where you can’t resize all the panels to exactly how you would like them without tweaking some XML code."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."

"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."

"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."

"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."

"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."

"The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten."

"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."

"Splunk Enterprise Security is cheaper than competitors, but I do not know whether it is just our contract."

"I work on the technical side, so I don't know precise figures. However, I know that Splunk is a premium product, so it's somewhat costly. Still, you get a lot of unique features for the money."

"Unlike other security tools, Splunk provides a fixed amount of gigabytes per day, and we are required to pay for any additional usage beyond that limit, in addition to our monthly cost."

"Further reductions would be fantastic, and I believe that more and more people would flock to it."

"In terms of pricing, I believe Splunk is unreasonably costly for the majority of mid and small-sized companies."

"Some of the insights that we have obtained as a part of using Splunk have greatly helped us in increasing our revenue in terms of selling our products."

"The price of Splunk is too high for our market."

"It's a yearly subscription."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at Deloitte & Touche

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

79%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

University

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?

The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?

The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten.

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?

I think the customization area in the tool can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required In the future, I want to see the tool have better customization abilities with som...

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...

Wazuh vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Comparisons

Compared 30% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Sentinel vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 11% of the time

ManageEngine Log360 vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 10% of the time

More SolarWinds Security Event Manager Competitors

IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 10% of the time

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 10% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 8% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 5% of the time

Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors

Product Reports

SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Download SolarWinds Security Event Manager product report

SolarWinds Security Event Manager report

Splunk Enterprise Security

Download Splunk Enterprise Security product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager

No data available

Overview

When TriGeo was acquired by SolarWinds, TriGeo SIM became known as SolarWinds Log & Event Manager. This product is a leading Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) product and log management solution, which provides log collection, analysis, and real-time correlation.

SolarWinds

Splunk Enterprise Security is widely used for security operations, including threat detection, incident response, and log monitoring. It centralizes log management, offers security analytics, and ensures compliance, enhancing the overall security posture of organizations.

Companies leverage Splunk Enterprise Security to monitor endpoints, networks, and users, detecting anomalies, brute force attacks, and unauthorized access. They use it for fraud detection, machine learning, and real-time alerts within their SOCs. The platform enhances visibility and correlates data from multiple sources to identify security threats efficiently. Key features include comprehensive dashboards, excellent reporting capabilities, robust log aggregation, and flexible data ingestion. Users appreciate its SIEM capabilities, threat intelligence, risk-based alerting, and correlation searches. Highly scalable and stable, it suits multi-cloud environments, reducing alert volumes and speeding up investigations.

What are the key features?

Comprehensive Dashboards: Provide a holistic view of security operations.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports various data sources for better analysis.
Robust Log Aggregation: Centralizes log management for easier monitoring.
Machine Learning Toolkit: Enhances threat detection and prediction capabilities.
SIEM Capabilities: Integrates security information and event management.
Threat Intelligence: Utilizes external information to improve security measures.
Risk-Based Alerting: Prioritizes alerts based on the risk they pose.
Correlation Searches: Identifies and correlates security events effectively.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced Visibility: Improves monitoring across endpoints, networks, and users.
Faster Incident Response: Speeds up identification and resolution of security issues.
Reduced Alert Volumes: Lowers false positives and enhances signal-to-noise ratio.
Scalability: Adapts to growing and changing security needs.
Improved Security Operations: Integrates multiple security facets into one platform.

Splunk Enterprise Security is implemented across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail. Financial institutions use it for fraud detection and compliance, while healthcare organizations leverage its capabilities to safeguard patient data. Retailers deploy it to protect customer information and ensure secure transactions.

Splunk

Sample Customers

NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.

Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.

SolarWinds Security Event Manager vs. Splunk Enterprise Security