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Mustafa Husny - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at Techline-eg
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
High level security, open-source, but lacking documentation
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Elastic Security are it is open-source and provides a high level of security."
  • "Elastic Security could improve the documentation. It would help if they were more simple and clean."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Elastic Security as part of the Elastic Search component. The solution provides us with security, such as threat protection.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Elastic Security are it is open-source and provides a high level of security.

What needs improvement?

Elastic Security could improve the documentation. It would help if they were more simple and clean.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Elastic Security for approximately two years.

Buyer's Guide
Elastic Security
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Elastic Security. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have one person using this solution.

How are customer service and support?

I have used the community support for Elastic Security. Sometimes the support is helpful and sometimes it is not.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used other similar solutions in the past.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Elastic Security is straightforward. However, the documentation could improve. The deployment can be done in approximately 15 minutes.

What was our ROI?

I have seen a return on investment using this solution.

What other advice do I have?

The solution can take up to 20 minutes to maintain when needed.

I rate Elastic Security a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
VP Platform Engineering at Hydrogen
Real User
Free to use, easy to set up, and quite stable
Pros and Cons
  • "We've found the initial setup to be quite straightforward."
  • "Sometimes, the solution isn't the easiest to use."

What is our primary use case?

ELK Stack is made up of Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. What we have is considered modified ELK Stack where instead of the Logstash we use Fluentd, but it serves the same purpose as basically a pipe to get the data into the Elasticsearch.

We primarily use the solution for everything you could think of from error detection to general logging and auditing, to security awareness.

What is most valuable?

Recently I started using some Kibana alerting, which is in the latest versions of Kibana. It's very helpful in general.

You can't beat the price as it is basically free. There are also a lot of features on offer.

We've found the initial setup to be quite straightforward.

The stability is excellent.

What needs improvement?

Sometimes, the solution isn't the easiest to use.

The solution probably doesn't have all of the advanced machine learning like some other SIEM providers have right now. It's something that could be improved upon.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for three or four years at this point. It's been a while.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution has been excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The reliability is very high.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have no reason to believe this solution wouldn't scale well if a company needed it to. I see no limitations there.

That said, that's a speculative area for us right now. We haven't attempted to scale the product ourselves.

Obviously, Elasticsearch has to do all of its indexing upfront and that might be a scaling concern whereas something like Devo with its just-in-time indexing is pretty darned interesting.

On our end, mostly development staff and operations staff are using it right now. For our organization, everything is going to increase. We're just starting to ramp up usage now.

How are customer service and technical support?

I've never dealt with technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not overly complex. It's pretty straightforward. A company shouldn't have any issues with the implementation process overall. Everything in AWS has gotten pretty straightforward.

The maintenance of the solution is minimal. It would only take one person to maintain it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price of the product is very good, as it is largely free. There isn't any operating cost. It's basically free software. I'm not aware of any enterprise versions that would cost more. Everything is an AWS service.

What other advice do I have?

We're just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

The product in general has come very far. It's gotten a lot better over the years.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations. I'd advise anyone to try it out.

Overall, I would rate it at an eight out of ten. We've largely been very pleased with the product.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Elastic Security
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Elastic Security. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
DevOps Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Central log management helped increase developer productivity
Pros and Cons
    • "Authentication is not a default in Kibana. We need to have another tool to have authentication and authorization. These two should be part of Kibana."
    • "We had issues with scalability. Logstash was not scaling and aggregation was getting delayed. We moved to Fluentd making our stack from ELK to EFK."

    How has it helped my organization?

    In my previous organization, I used this for central log management, increasing developer productivity.

    What is most valuable?

    Elasticsearch Indexing and the Visualize tools of Kibana.

    What needs improvement?

    Authentication is not a default in Kibana. We need to have another tool to have authentication and authorization. These two should be part of Kibana.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    No issues with stability.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We had issues with scalability. Logstash was not scaling and aggregation was getting delayed. We moved to Fluentd making our stack from ELK to EFK.

    How is customer service and technical support?

    We were using the open source version. Community support is good.

    How was the initial setup?

    Complex. We needed to analyze multiple factors, like benchmarking, performance of Logstash.

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate it at eight out of 10. It is scalable (if used properly), durable, and performance tested.

    If you are good to spend money, Splunk is way better for log management. There might be other use cases where you may need ELK.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1411278 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Big Data Team Leader at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    Easy to use across different use cases but stability depends on your design of implementation
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable thing is that this solution is widely used for work management and research. It's easy to jump into the security use case with the same technology."
    • "In terms of improvement, there could be more automation in responding to and evaluating detections."

    What is our primary use case?

    Elastic Security is usually used to deliver and analyze logs for security teams. Some common use cases include search and analytics of log data from the system and sending it to other components. We are using features like point security and detection of gathering data.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The most valuable thing is that this solution is widely used for work management and research. It's easy to jump into the security use case with the same technology. Also, it's valuable from an operational point of view as you have the same knowledge of how to operate it, how to work management, search, and security instance.

    What is most valuable?

    The important part is that it's free of charge usage. For our use case, it's enough, and it's for a good cost because the basic level of the solution is free.

    What needs improvement?

    In terms of improvement, there could be more automation in responding to and evaluating detections. Additionally, there could be some sort of intelligent database checking for better effects. Overall, I think there could be more automation.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Elastic Security for four years now. When it started because we were working with Endgame before it merged with Elastic.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I rate the stability an eight out of ten because it depends on the design and how well you monitor it.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten; it is a very scalable solution. We work with enterprise-level companies.

    How are customer service and support?

    The customer support is good. You have support from all project stages, beginning with the architecture. And after you roll out the solution, you have dedicated technical staff for the project.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup depends on what you were expecting, but since we have experience with it and know what it's good for, it's an eight out of ten. The initial deployment typically takes about a day. Then there's an initial stage of the project to integrate some of the client's specific requirements, which can take additional time depending on the complexity of their environment.

    When it comes to maintenance, it depends on the project, and sometimes one person can support all roles.

    Usually, it's enough to have one engineer with deep technical knowledge of the operating system and the deployment and configuration of the system. The other role is an analytical role with project management and coordination skills to communicate with customers and drive delivery.

    What about the implementation team?

    We implement Elastic Security in our customer's environment. We are like a consulting company. Depending on their preference, the initial deployment could be on their internal cloud, on-premises, or on hardware visualization. The advantage of this solution is that it can be deployed anywhere, including public clouds, private clouds, on-premises, bare metal, and even on Kubernetes.

    The deployment takes a few days, and in the initial stage of projects, it could take two months with some integrations to the system, setting some rules, and so on. But it also depends on our customers and how familiar they are with it and what they want.

    Usually, we start with a small installation with a bit fewer sources, install the initial setup, and gather information from selected systems such as legacy systems, infrastructure systems, custom applications, and so on running in the customer environment. Then we show how our solution behaves, how it grows, and what is the expected volume of data. We plan the next iterations to extend the hardware deployment. As users start using the platform and become familiar with it, they can set their requirements for implementing iterations. Then we shape the infrastructure and implement some rules, detections, machine learning, and other features.

    We prefer to move forward very fast with no big analytics because customers usually don't know what is happening in their systems, and with this approach, we are showing them what they need to focus on.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would say you don't spend too much time evaluating and comparing it with other products. Just start with it because you can begin for free and gain knowledge. It's the best approach.

    It's also a good idea to run it next to other solutions, like Splunk or QRadar, or something else, and compare how you can use this platform. We have also done some migration projects from these platforms to Elastic Security. Initially, some expectations were that it could not be as good for the price because it's free or cheaper, but surprisingly, we found it valuable and easy to use.

    Overall, I rate it a seven out of ten because some features are still missing. However, it's a developing platform and technology that is a good investment for the future. Every release adds new features, and the platform fits future requests and changing IT landscapes, like cloud environments. There are no limits, and it's an open platform that can serve all needs.

    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1596219 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
    Real User
    Integrates into the overall ELK Stack, scans for vulnerabilities well and offers good performance
    Pros and Cons
    • "We chose the product based on the ability to scan for malware using a malware behavioral model as opposed to just a traditional hash-based antivirus. Therefore, it's not as intensive."
    • "It could use maybe a little more on the Linux side."

    What is most valuable?

    We really like that it integrates into the overall ELK Stack, and we're using that as our theme. We were looking for a product compatible with that. We like the detailed investigation features of the platform as you're able to get a lot of detail as to what's going on on the host when you do investigations. We like the quarantine feature.

    We chose the product based on the ability to scan for malware using a malware behavioral model as opposed to just a traditional hash-based antivirus. Therefore, it's not as intensive. We have a lot of satellite communications, and it's not as intensive since we don't require updates to calm down on a regular basis for updated DAT files for hashes on a regular basis. We only have to update quarterly against the new malware model. It's also a lot less impactful from a performance perspective on a machine.

    What needs improvement?

    It's a pretty solid product. It's pretty easy to use as it's not a full endpoint protection suite. We're actually dependent on using Windows Defender for a firewall and traditional antivirus when it's required. It could use maybe a little more on the Linux side. Now that the product line is getting picked up by Elastic, they're going to continue to build out and make the Linux feature set more robust. However, I would say that right now the Linux feature set is a little limited.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using the solution for about a year.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Stability is very good. It's a very stable product. We haven't had any issues with stability at all.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    For what we use it for, scalability has been great. Our environments tend to be smaller. We're only talking about 200 to 1,000 systems. Therefore, I don't know that I could speak to a real large scale since that's not our implementation level.

    We are kind of in an interesting use case as we're not actually using it on a day-to-day basis. We are a production house, and we shift suites out to customers to use. As far as what the user feedback is on a regular basis, we don't really see a ton of that unless we kind of go out and hunt for it.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We're using the Microsoft Defender product. It's just what's embedded inside of the operating system. It's not the full Defender for Endpoint. It's just Windows and antivirus.

    How was the initial setup?

    The Endgame itself is extremely straightforward to set up and you just filled out the ISO and you follow a couple of wizards you're done. It's very easy. I would say the ELK Stack is a little more complicated, however, that's due to the way we implement PKI in our environment. The product in itself is fairly straightforward to implement. It's our choice of certificate implementation that's making it a little more complicated.

    We targeted it to be able to be maintained by one person. In a lot of cases, our scenario is that we only have one person available to maintain the product. It's very easy to maintain. There's not a ton going on. In a scene, you always have to have somebody watching the log of traffic if you want it to be effective. However, outside of that, there's no extreme maintenance associated with the product.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    I do not know approximately how much it costs per month or per year. I'm not the one who makes the purchases.

    What other advice do I have?

    We are just customers. 

    I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Principal Cyber Security Manager at Ask4key
    Real User
    Valuable prevention methods and asset alerts, but room for improvement in the Kibana dashboard and asset management
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable features of the solution are the prevention methods and the incident alerts."
    • "There is room for improvement in the Kibana dashboard and in the asset management for the program."

    What is our primary use case?

    My clients use this solution for security purposes and SIEM and log management.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable features of the solution are the prevention methods and the incident alerts. 

    What needs improvement?

    There is room for improvement in the Kibana dashboard and in the asset management for the program.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been working with Elastic Security for almost two years now.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The solution is stable if you don't touch it too much. Meaning, it's technically stable, but if there is a period of downtime, you will face quite a big hiccup in getting it running again and stabilized.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability of Elastic is amazing. 

    How are customer service and support?

    I would say the technical support isn't really good or bad. On a scale of one to ten, I would give it a five. 

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Neutral

    How was the initial setup?

    The setup can sometimes be quite complex for the backend team. It all depends on the client's environment, so we have to be flexible.

    What about the implementation team?

    My company provides a team for deployment, which usually consists of at least three or four engineers. Deployment generally takes six months to one year.

    What was our ROI?

    I would say that, on average, a good ROI can be seen within one and a half to two years after deploying Elastic Security. 

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Licensing for the solution is available as a one-year or three-year plan, and all of the features are included.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten.

    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
    PeerSpot user
    PeerSpot user
    Programmer at a tech services company
    Real User
    Stable, with good documentation, but needs better email notification
    Pros and Cons
    • "ELK documentation is very good, so never needed to contact technical support."
    • "Email notification should be done the same way as Logentries does it."
    • "We set up a cron job to delete old logs so that we wouldn't hit a disk space issue. Such a feature should be available in the UI, where old logs can be deleted automatically. (Don’t know if this feature is already there)."
    • "They don't provide user authentication and authorisation features (Shield) as a part of their open-source version."

    What is most valuable?

    Documentation is very good, so implementation is fine.

    What needs improvement?

    Email notification should be done the same way as Logentries does it. Because of the notification issue we moved to Logentries, as it provides a simple way to get notification whenever a server encounters an error or something unexpected happens (which we have defined using Regex).

    We set up a cron job to delete old logs so that we wouldn't hit a disk space issue. Such a feature should be available in the UI, where old logs can be deleted automatically. (Don’t know if this feature is already there).

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    No issues with stability.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Not really, but we did set up a cron job to delete old logs so that we wouldn't hit a disk space issue.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    ELK documentation is very good, so never needed to contact technical support.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We used Logentries, but because it is open-source we moved to ELK as a part of cost-cutting strategy and evaluation of ELK. But the lack of a notification feature caused us to go back to Logentries.

    How was the initial setup?

    Slightly complex, especially when you are configuring machines which are on a separate IP rather than on a single machine. In my case Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Logstash were on different machines. Along with that, we added a proxy server (nginx) ahead of the Kibana server. We used the proxy server for user authentication so that only known users should be able to access the Kibana dashboard. ELK didn’t have a free version for user authentication and that made us go for the alternative. We have, in total, four machines.

    What other advice do I have?

    I give it a seven out of 10. They don't provide user authentication and authorisation features (Shield) as a part of their open-source version.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Desarrollador Java Senior Full Stack at Optimissa Capital Markets Consulting
    Real User
    Strong search function improved our speed
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable feature is the search function, which allows me to go directly to the target to see the specific line a customer is searching for."
    • "The price of this product could be improved, especially the additional costs. I would also like to see better-quality graphics."

    What is our primary use case?

    My primary use case is to check market prices.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The main benefit of using this solution is that it improves your speed as you don't have to waste time searching for answers.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable feature is the search function, which allows me to go directly to the target to see the specific line a customer is searching for.

    What needs improvement?

    The price of this product could be improved, especially the additional costs. I would also like to see better-quality graphics.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I have found some bugs, but overall the stability is fine.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability is fine.

    How are customer service and support?

    Technical support is good, they're able to answer all of our questions.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup wasn't difficult, but that varies depending on the number of servers you have.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    This tool is affordable, and its price is ok.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Elastic Security Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: November 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Elastic Security Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.