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SolarWinds Security Event Manager vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 29, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
20th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
26
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
7.1
Number of Reviews
301
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.6%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 11.2%, down from 15.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Alex Kinyanjui - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Avinash Gopu. - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good visibility into multiple environments, significantly reduces our alert volume, and speeds up our security investigations
There are limitations with Splunk not detecting all user activity, especially on mainframes and network devices. This is because Splunk relies on agents, which cannot access certain workstations. In these cases, we have to rely on application data. For example, with mainframes, manual reports are generated and sent to Splunk, limiting visibility to what's manually reported. This lack of automation for specific platforms needs improvement from Splunk. Additionally, API access is limited for other applications that rely on API calls and requests. This requires heavy customization on Splunk's end. These are the main challenges we've encountered. Monitoring multiple cloud platforms, like Azure, GCP, and AWS, with Splunk Enterprise Security presents some challenges. While Splunk provides different connectors for each provider, consolidating data from two domains across distinct cloud environments can be complex. However, leveraging pre-built templates and Splunk's data collation capabilities can help overcome these hurdles. Despite initial difficulties, I believe Splunk can effectively address this task, earning it an eight out of ten rating for its multi-cloud monitoring capabilities. While Splunk Enterprise Security offers insider threat detection capabilities, its effectiveness could be enhanced by integrating with additional tools, such as endpoint security solutions. This integrated approach is particularly crucial for financial institutions, which often require dedicated endpoint security teams. While using multiple tools is valuable, further improvements within Splunk itself are also necessary. Considering both external integration and internal development, I would rate its current insider threat detection capabilities as three out of ten. Threat detection is where Splunk falls behind. While it offers tools, other use cases require additional work. PAM is an enterprise tool that centralizes information about users, servers, and everything else. It needs real-time monitoring, which I haven't seen in any of the companies I've worked for. They only rely on Splunk for alerting, but real-time monitoring should be handled by the endpoint security team's tools. This means there's no detection or analysis at the machine or endpoint level. Additionally, threat analysis reporting is also absent.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ease of use for the end user."
"It performs network behavior monitoring, log monitoring, and disaster recovery monitoring."
"The graphical user interface is very user-friendly. SolarWinds is a hybrid solution so you can use it across many platforms."
"It supports high availability, which is very helpful."
"This tool is simple to use."
"Some of the rules are most valuable because you can be notified about various things, such as spyware or things that are going on in the internal network."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting."
"Its compatibility with other SIEMS is very useful."
"Splunk has helped improve our company's resilience level."
"Compared to IBM QRadar, Splunk Enterprise Security offers faster alert resolution."
"The search function for spam is like a google search. You just enter and it will quickly show you the results."
"Easy to deploy and simple to use."
"Splunk setup is easy and straightforward. ​"
"The most valuable features include the incident review and Dashboard Studio."
"Splunk can deliver more information by going deeper. By creating a dashboard, we can identify the root cause of the threat. Let's say I have a firewall from Check Point. Splunk will find the dashboard for Check Point, implement it in our environment, and connect it to the Check Point firewall logs, which are shown on the dashboard. If we request a custom dashboard, the engineer will take longer to complete the task."
 

Cons

"The only issue is the pricetag. SolarWinds is a costly solution."
"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."
"The solution's technical support is okay, but we don't have an SLA, and sometimes the response times are very slow."
"We used the support from SolarWinds Security Event Manager and they are knowledgeable but challenging to get in contact with them."
"It won't tell you when your backups are failing, but it will give you hints when your database is running on full recovery."
"It can be difficult for users who are inexperienced with the solution."
"SolarWinds should improve its correlation capabilities. The correlation does not automatically detect and reduce the events fast enough. You have to manually do a correlation report, which means the tool is not scalable in many ways."
"There is no correlation made between log entries, so no threat information is presented."
"The Splunk platform is not unified. We have all of these different tools and they feel a bit disjointed."
"We are waiting for Dashboard Studio to mature a little bit more. There are some things that we are using with Classic Dashboards which have not yet made it to Dashboard Studio. We are waiting for that."
"Splunk Enterprise Security provides us with the relevant context to help guide our investigations, but it would be interesting to add even more context, for instance, in order to raise the level of risk."
"If you monitor too much, you can lose performance on your systems."
"Splunk Enterprise Security offers a vast amount of information to learn and comprehend, resulting in a challenging initial learning curve."
"The user access control could be much more granular, so that the admins can control r/w/x access for specific features of the product like dashboards, etc."
"Due to its high licensing cost, Splunk is out of reach for many organizations."
"The setup time is quite long."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."
"It's more expensive than the other tools, but it's worth it. Every penny is worth it."
"The tool's licensing is good and we haven't received any complaints from the team handling it."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is priced lower than competitors."
"The pricing modules could be improved."
"It can be expensive, especially the licensing costs. However, there is added value in what it can do, not just log aggregation."
"Splunk is really expensive."
"The price is comparable."
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824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Educational Organization
78%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
University
2%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Security Event Manager vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.