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reviewer953235 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Engineer at a recreational facilities/services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Very versatile for many use cases
Pros and Cons
  • "The feature that I have found most valuable with Splunk is the ability to sift through a bunch of data very quickly."
  • "Their technical support sucks."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Splunk in the standard information security use case. We're also using it for various application use cases around identity management, windows active directory, and those types of use cases.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk has provided a venue for us to determine student engagement during COVID, for which we didn't really have any other way except by looking at data that we captured off of our student systems and our authentication servers to see who's logging in, and who's logging out, and for how long they've been logged in.

What is most valuable?

The feature that I have found most valuable with Splunk is the ability to sift through a bunch of data very quickly.

We have about a 500 gig license with Splunk, so it's not like petabytes of data, but even 500 gigs is kind of hard to sift through sometimes.

What needs improvement?

Splunk has been improving consistently over the last couple of revs. I still think there are some administrative features that they could improve on and make them less kludgy, but from a user perspective, it has gotten very clean and very sexy looking over the last few builds. So the users seem to like it.

By less kludgy, I mean that in the version I'm running, I still have to go into the command line and modify files and then go into the GUI and validate that they got modified. So it's not all in the GUI, but it has been moving slowly to the GUI over the last several versions. It would be nice if they could move all of the administrative features into a GUI platform so that when you're in the Splunk distributed environment management platform, you then don't have to go into the command line to add new applications or new packages that you then want to be able to push out to your forwarders. Their forwarder management is still kind of split that way.

I don't really have any feature requests in Splunk's space. They seem to be doing a good job of keeping it contemporary from that perspective. 

Splunk's mission is to move everyone to the cloud and charge us a bunch more money. Their goal is to cloud source everything, and quite honestly, the price of cloud sourcing the product, even at smaller 500 gigs a day (which isn't a lot of data by Splunk standards) in the cloud for that is ludicrous. The cost for me to buy equipment every three years and own licensing and run it local to my prem, is significantly less from a three or five year license. I'm going to spend X amount of money on hardware every X years, and I'm going to have to pay licensing costs on software of X over that same period versus that amount that I'd amortize over five years is what I would be paying every year in the cloud.

That is the point with the product. It seems like they are so focused on forcing everyone into the cloud that they seem to be not understanding that there are people that don't have those really deep pockets. It's one thing for a Fortune 50 company to spend a million dollars a year in the cloud. It's another thing when you're a nonprofit educational institute to spend that kind of money in the cloud. Even though we do get some discounts in most of the cloud space providers, it is still not on par with the big public businesses.

Buyer's Guide
Splunk Enterprise Security
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Splunk Enterprise Security. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk for probably 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

At least in our environment, it is super stable. When you think about how much time you spend working with other applications, just Windows Server requires more feeding than Splunk does, you see that Splunk is a very low maintenance care and feeding product.

We have probably 150 users in the environment and their roles vary from being application management folks to application engineering folks to the executive suite, so lots of different use cases. The executive suite tend to prefer more curated content and the application owners have a mix of curated content and dynamic search functions they can perform. Then the engineering tier basically gets some curated content and some free reign to do whatever they want for the most part. I'm the guy that supports this instance. So there's one person.

I support not only Splunk, but I am also the campus security engineer and I'm also the dude that runs or is responsible for all of our campus monitoring infrastructure. So that tells you how little maintenance is required.

We are adding new use cases on a fairly regular basis and we are adding more licensing to our indexing license. I don't see Splunk going away. There's nothing else that I think provides the ability to do this much data analytics from just the numbers of equipment that you need to run it. Also, the number of people that you need to actually make sure that it's functioning well. In higher ed., everybody always says we should do open source. And I respond that what I do in Splunk with 20 systems, I would need three racks of equipment to do on an open source platform. I have basically 70 - 75% of the racks now and I'd need three times that or more to run this as an open source product. And it wouldn't be as cute and it wouldn't be as beautiful or as flexible.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I know other folks in the higher ed. space that are running petabyte size instances with Splunk. So I would have to say it scales very well just from talking to the folks in my market silo.

How are customer service and support?

Their technical support sucks.

My engagement with their technical support was for a product which they basically took over from an open source product and they just seemed to not be able to figure out why it's not doing what it's supposed to do. The number of times I've had to engage with Splunk for solutions has been for a couple of use cases. And in every one of those use cases, support was very painful. It took a very long time and it seemed like they were more interested in burning their queue volume than actually satisfying me as a customer.

I work in higher ed. Here in higher ed., it costs us a lot of money to run it. The support from the company that you spend a lot of money with is pretty poor. I get most of my support through the Splunk sales folks because they seem to know more and they're more incentivized to keep me as a customer. When I call in to open a ticket with Splunk support, they really don't know, and this is going to sound terrible, they don't really care whether I have a 50 Meg license or a 50 petabyte license. If it's not on their workflow, their pre-programmed triage, they can't do it.

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

Splunk came into being at Case Western when we were looking for a better log product than Check Point was providing at that point in time. My entire investment in Splunk, in hardware and software and integration cost, was cheaper than what Check Point was going to provide, or what the Check Point solution path was for just looking at firewall data. We knew we needed to be able to do more analytics than what we were currently getting out of our firewall products and Splunk was brought in to do that. It can do this and a whole lot more.

How was the initial setup?

Splunk is a complex critter to put in and it's a more complex critter to keep running. We have 10 search heads and four indexers and universal and a heavy forwarding cluster. We have clustered indexers and clustered search heads. This is definitely not a drag and drop product.

We engaged a third party Splunk integrator to help us do our Splunk deployment and they did our initial deployment. We used a different integrator to do some of our upgrades, which we probably won't use again. Our implementation strategy was we really just wanted to look at the classic security use case when we put this in 10 years ago. Then after that came in, and everybody was happy with what it was doing, we added some other use cases and universal forwarding and so on and so forth.

What about the implementation team?

We used an integrator.

The integrator we used to do our initial deployment was excellent. The integrator we used to do our last round of upgrades was less than excellent.

When I hire an integrator to do an upgrade in an environment, I expect them to come back and say "all of your application layer apps are upgradeable, but your OS's need to be upgraded. Do you want me to do that? Or should you do that?" I now have different versions of OS's under Splunk running in my Linux world and it would've been nice to upgrade the system OS and then upgrade Splunk, even if it was more disruptive. I guess I have to read the statement of work more closely in the future.

What was our ROI?

The TCO and ROI are really great if you're in the private, non-public sector and you're in a more standard business sector. The return on investment in total cost of ownership on Splunk is from somebody who doesn't fit into that neat silo. Do we calculate that stuff? So our return on investment is by being able to solve problems that we never knew we could solve. My answer to it is the flexibility to be able to figure out student engagement when COVID hit. This was the only platform we could do it on.

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

I can comment on price in this way - in education in Ohio, we're part of the Ohio supercomputer consortium, and they act as a collective bargaining agent. So we get our licensing as a piece of the State of Ohio's Splunk license. So my pricing is very much not list or even reduced list because of the volume that the state buys.

We generally spend about $20,000 a year in third party integrator costs to get us past some of the rough edges that we get with Splunk support.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We briefly looked at the open source product and we obviously looked at a Check Point product. When we looked at Splunk it seemed like they had a smaller cost to procure it, and a much smaller cost to maintain it than all of those other solutions. So it was kind of why we went with Splunk. This is very non-intuitive since everybody says they love Splunk but it costs too much.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to anyone considering Splunk is to understand exactly how much data you want to look at and you want to bring in on a daily basis. Then create a rational strategy to bring the data in, in reasonably sized chunks, that fulfill a use case at a time.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Splunk a really good nine.

I'd rate it a really good nine because it's really versatile. You can do a lot of things with it. It allows you to do a lot of analytics in the platform without needing a bunch of other third partyware to help you figure it out.

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
Balamurali Vellalath - PeerSpot reviewer
Practice Head-CyberSecurity at ALTEN calsoft Labs
MSP
Top 10
Good support with an intuitive dashboard but the cost is too high
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable aspect of the solution is the dashboard. It's very intuitive."
  • "There are a lot of competitive products that are doing better than what Splunk is doing on the analytics side."

What is our primary use case?

Since we have an IT services company, we have been using Splunk for the deployment to the customer locations as well. Sometimes the customer will come back to us and say that we need to have a SIEM tool, and when we do the benchmarking, we'll do a couple of deployments on the Splunk side and at the customer's locations as well.

As an example use case, we deployed Splunk to a banking institution a few years ago. There the use case was basically this: the customer wanted to set up a security operation center, and they wanted to have a pretty large deployment in terms of the number of endpoints and number of switches and routers. There were many regional branch offices and they have data centers and therefore, many assets in terms of endpoints. They had 30% of their assets are running on the cloud and they needed a complete solution from an incident monitoring and management perspective. That's why we deployed Splunk. 

They wanted to reduce the MTTR, and meantime resolution, and maintain detection. They didn't want to add more SOC analysts into their SOC as the organization scaled up. They have a plan to scale from 5,000 endpoints into 15-20,000 endpoints. They're very particular about deploying the SOC operation center.

Splunk has since acquired Phantom as a SOAR platform. Therefore, we have tried to manage the security automation using Phantom with the help of Splunk deployments. It helps us meet the customer's requirements.

How has it helped my organization?

In terms of support, we're able to get the right support at the right time. If there's a break or an appliance issue, they're are on top of it.

This is very important during large-scale deployments. It's not easy to address product-related issues or appliance-related issues, and the number of collectors or number of logs that come into the collector, and managing the collectors across the branch offices, across the corporate offices, etc. It is a cumbersome process for us. That's why it's integral that we get the right support at the right time - and they make this happen.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the dashboard. It's very intuitive. 

The reporting is excellent. The team and the SOC analyst are able to easily track the alerts and the correlation is very good compared to other SIEM tools. 

What needs improvement?

There are a lot of competitive products that are doing better than what Splunk is doing on the analytics side.

The automation could be better. Typically, the issue that we face is that it has to go to the analytics engine, then goes to the automation engine, basically. Therefore, if there are no proper analytics, the SOAR module is going to be overloaded, and we are not able to get the expected result out from the SOAR module. If they improve the analytics, I think they'll be able to solve these issues very quickly.

The playbooks which they create and provide to premium users can improve a lot. They have to create a common platform wherein the end-customers like us can choose the playbooks, and automation playbooks readily available.

In terms of integration with the third-party tools, what we are seeing is that it's very limited compared to the competitive products. Competitive products have a lot of connectors and APIs that they have developed, and that's where the cloud integration, whether it is a public cloud or a private cloud integration comes in. There are a lot of limitations to this product compared to other products.

For how long have I used the solution?

In terms of Splunk, I've been working on it for more than three years in the current company. Prior to that, I worked with it at another company as well. In total, I have been using Splunk for close to six or seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable, however, sometimes in some of the collectors, we are facing a lot of issues. That said, overall, if you rate it from one to five, I would say in terms of stability, it will stand at a three. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is perfectly fine. It's very awesome compared to all the other tools, as easily we can integrate with the log forwarding modules and the collector management appliances or modules. That aspect won't be a problem. 

If you look at the SIEM as a market today, Splunk is expensive compared to other competitive products. I'm also into the SIEM evaluation in my current role. I've seen that there are many tools are coming up in the last one and half years. I have also seen many other mature tools that are available now. If you compare next-gen SIEM tools compared to the Splunk, it's expensive. Therefore, it's possible we may not use this in the future or expand on current usage.

How are customer service and technical support?

In terms of technical support, we don't have any issues, as the professional services which they have extended to us are very, very good. We're able to manage many of the critical issues with their support. I'd say we are definitely satisfied with the level of service provided.

How was the initial setup?

In terms of deployment, it's not so complex compared to the competitive products, however, we will be able to manage that deployment. We don't feel there's any problem on the deployment side. In that sense, I don't think deployment is a complex one when somebody going for Splunk as a tool.

How long it takes to deploy the solution depends on the size of the deployment, basically. Even a large deployment won't take more than a week. When I say deployment, I'm considering all the log collection, log management, and the curation of the incidents, and how incidents are created and routed properly according to prioritization. 

What was our ROI?

In terms of ROI, for example, if you look at one of our customers today, they are managing close to 100 million events per day. If you look at a traditional SIEM with 100 million events, they need to manage this environment with at least 25 to 30 people. That's 30 security analysts that have to be there. However, when Splunk was deployed, a lot of automation was added on top of it, and today we are managing the same environment with Splunk with close to 15 people. In that sense, if you look at it that way, the ROI is between 30-40%.

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

In terms of a comparison with the rest of the competition, the licensing cost would be, I would say, 30% higher than most.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing Splunk, we have evaluated QRadar and LogRhythm. QRadar is much more expensive. LogRhythm lacked reporting.

We ended up choosing Splunk due to the pricing and the reporting features. It also had the kind of scalability that was required. We felt it would help us in terms of positioning from both a cost perspective and an incident alert perspective.

What other advice do I have?

We're partners. We have a business relationship with Splunk.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I'd advise potential new users to ensure they do proper sizing before deploying the product. If it's a very large deployment, the number of endpoints will be quite sizeable. You need to figure out the correct number of endpoints as well as endpoint devices, switches, routers, etc.

It's also a good idea to look at use cases. Splunk is very strong in some use cases. It's important to look into deployment scenarios and check out the use cases before deploying anything.

My biggest takeaway after working with the solution is that the environment is very important. You need to be clear about the problem you are addressing and it takes a lot of planning at the outset.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Enterprise Security
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Splunk Enterprise Security. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer2499705 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Senior Manager, Security Operations Center at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Helps us normalize our data because it comes with predefined dashboards
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable function is the notable events. When I joined the team, I asked them what they could currently see, and they said nothing. I was pretty shocked. I know for a fact that they're using Enterprise Security or at least they had purchased it. I told them that there are several dashboards within Splunk that we can leverage. There is also notable events where we can see potential incidents or potential alerts about the infrastructure and the network itself."
  • "I would like to have fraud detection features. Fraud is within the same turf as with security operations. Fraud and cybersecurity work hand in hand. I would like to have detection capabilities, or at least dashboards in Enterprise Security for fraud."

What is our primary use case?

We use Splunk Enterprise Security for a lot of use cases. We use the predefined use cases and dashboards for AWS, notable events, endpoint detection network, and audit notable events.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable function is the notable events. When I joined the team, I asked them what they could currently see, and they said nothing. I was pretty shocked. I know that they were using Enterprise Security or at least they had purchased it. I told them that there are several dashboards within Splunk that we can leverage. There is also notable events where we can see potential incidents or potential alerts about the infrastructure and the network itself. 

The dashboards give us numbers for malware infection. So long as those dashboards are actionable, they help the SOC team a lot.

It's important to respond to incidents in a timely manner. Having end-to-end visibility across the board equips the team to make sure that whatever incident happens, it has a very minimum impact on the business. It also allows us to fix things that need to be fixed immediately. That's the asset of having end-to-end visibility across the board.

Enterprise Security really helps us normalize our data because it comes with predefined dashboards, so we only need to ingest the logs and Splunk will do the work to display what we need to see on a day-to-day basis.

When we started using Splunk, we had tons of false positives. We reduced our alerts by 90%. Most of our alerts now are actionable.

What needs improvement?

I would like to have fraud detection features. Fraud is within the same turf as with security operations. Fraud and cybersecurity work hand in hand. I would like to have detection capabilities, or at least dashboards in Enterprise Security for fraud. 

There's already a fraud offering from Splunk for fraud use cases but it's different. I need to get professional services for me to get that feature. It would be much more cost-efficient for customers if all those dashboards could be readily available within ES.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security since I joined my company in 2019, so it's been roughly five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Cisco just acquired Splunk so I expect the stability to still be the same since Cisco is established. 

How are customer service and support?

I would rate support a nine out of ten because there's always room for improvement. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security an eight out of ten. To make it a perfect ten, I would like to see them implement the fraud detection features. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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PeerSpot user
MarcoDi Gioia - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at Sitael
Consultant
Is flexible, and provides good actionable intelligence, but is expensive
Pros and Cons
  • "Splunk Enterprise Security offers two valuable features: the Common Information Model and arrangement modules."
  • "While Splunk offers SOAR as a separate product, integrating it into the next version of Splunk Enterprise Security as a unified solution would be beneficial."

What is our primary use case?

Splunk Enterprise Security is used for security monitoring. It helps manage the governance of the security monitoring from the start of an incident to the resolution.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk Enterprise Security offers excellent visibility across multiple environments. It's a flexible platform with virtually no limitations.

The actionable intelligence provided by the threat intelligence management feature is good.

Splunk Enterprise Security does a good job analyzing malicious activities and detecting breaches.

Splunk Enterprise Security helps us detect threats much faster than before.

Depending on the client and their configuration, Splunk Enterprise Security can help reduce their alert volume by under 50 percent.

Splunk Enterprise Security helps our clients expedite security investigations. It achieves this by streamlining the process of finding evidence and incident logs within Splunk's data module.

What is most valuable?

Splunk Enterprise Security offers two valuable features: the Common Information Model and arrangement modules. The CIM helps standardize data for efficient searches, while arrangement modules automate incident log processing by enriching them with contextual client information.

What needs improvement?

While Splunk offers SOAR as a separate product, integrating it into the next version of Splunk Enterprise Security as a unified solution would be beneficial.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for 2 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Splunk Enterprise Security is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk Enterprise Security is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support experience is moderate. It can take a long time to resolve issues, and I often need to explain the problem to multiple support representatives. Ideally, I would have a single point of contact assigned to my ticket throughout the entire process.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Splunk Enterprise Security involves moderate complexity. Deployment time can vary significantly, ranging from one hour to one month, depending on the environment's complexity.

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

Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security 7 out of 10.

I suggest integrating SOAR with Splunk Enterprise Security.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: consultant
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Senior Engineering Manager at Happiest Minds Technologies
Real User
Provides integrations, enables customizations, and has a good security posture and a helpful support team
Pros and Cons
  • "The product has a good security posture."
  • "The glass table feature does not perform as expected."

What is our primary use case?

We have many use cases for firewall logs in our system. We collect logs from these firewalls and customize our use cases.

What is most valuable?

The triad is one of the best features. The product has a good security posture. It provides many customizations.

What needs improvement?

The glass table feature does not perform as expected. It must be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The tool is stable. I rate the stability a seven or eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate the product's scalability an eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

If something doesn't work, we reach out to the support team. The support provided by the team is great. The support is part of the entitlements in the license we buy.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I'm using Microsoft Sentinel. It is a cloud-native tool. Compared to Splunk Enterprise Security, Microsoft Sentinel is easier to handle. We use Splunk Enterprise Security because we have to manage a big infrastructure and may have many security vulnerabilities. The cybersecurity team decided to use Splunk Enterprise Security. The volume of data is high, so it is easier to manage it in Splunk.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment was complex. If we need to customize the solution, we need one to four weeks to get all the data, manage the license, and calculate the resources.

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

The solution is costly. The cost is calculated based on the volume of data ingested per day.

What other advice do I have?

It is not complicated to monitor multiple cloud environments using Splunk. It is one of the best solutions. The multiple cloud integration is open source. It's really helpful to monitor the structure and user authentication. I would definitely suggest it to people.

It's feasible to achieve visibility into multiple environments using the product. The cloud solution is recommendable. The on-premise product is tedious to manage, but it will be easier if we have a good resource to take care of the administration as an architect.

The tool has threat-detection capabilities. There are some limitations. We have a set of rules and patterns where we collect the tagging and the data we want to alert. It would have been better if detection and threat analysis recommendations were available out of the box. Though the solution keeps updating with the market demands, I still feel that the feature needs to be more reactive.

The product has inbuilt use cases for analyzing malicious activities and detecting breaches. It helps us run our alerts to catch malicious actions like brute force attacks or user-related authentication challenges. Splunk Enterprise Security has helped us reduce our alert volume. It has many automations and integrations. The SOAR tool detects and automatically manages repetitive and generic alerts proactively.

Splunk Enterprise Security helps us speed up our security investigations. It's at the top of its game. The tool is proactive and helps us take action before something happens. It has reduced our security threats. It is saving us hours of investigation. If you have a big data source, then I would recommend Splunk Enterprise Security. It will be easy for you to manage the data load. If you do not have a high data volume, you can look for other solutions like Sumo Logic.

My experience with the solution is really good. It has the capability to analyze the platform and take care of vulnerabilities. There is scope for improvement. We have a huge data volume of 2 TB per day. Our platform needs a solution like Splunk Enterprise Security to maintain the data volume and filter out our security vulnerability logs.

Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Jeremiah Anderson - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Cybersecurity Engineer Splunk Architect at Coalfire Federal
Real User
Top 10
Reduces troubleshooting time, but the interface and usability need to be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "Internal tracking is helpful because we do not like to deal with multiple ticketing systems, and I am not a fan of ServiceNow. We are able to keep everything internal and utilize Enterprise Security."
  • "Its interface and usability can always be improved."

What is our primary use case?

Being in an air-gapped environment, we pretty much look for insider threats and other notables related to improper configurations and against security best practices.

We are 100% on-prem and in an air-gapped environment, so there is no Internet connection.

How has it helped my organization?

There have been some improvements, especially related to centering. We added user behavioral analytics, so it imports everything. Any threat generated inside of that goes into Enterprise Security. I wish anomalies would go in there, but I can understand why they don't, as it generates so many anomalies. However, it would be nice if I could select certain anomalies that would be helpful with notables. This way, I can track down security events before they become threats.

I believe Splunk Enterprise Security has reduced our mean time to resolve, but we do not have any definitive timing metrics.

Splunk has helped improve our organization’s business resilience because it is a central location where correlation searches populate. We can easily track down and figure out where issues lie, which minimizes the time of my SOC team. It probably saves them a couple of hours considering it is colocating everything in one location. It would be nice if there were better ways to search for the data. We can take a look at the raw logs, but we should be able to find the actual event that caused the problem and see all the logs associated with it in a standard log format as opposed to just a text file with all the events added in.

We are a small environment, so we do not get a lot of alerts. We work on the issues as we get them and I am sure it saves a couple of hours.

In terms of its ability to predict, identify, and solve problems in real-time, it works really well when you are connected to the Internet. The predictive analysis is more cloud-based. Trying to find ways to do it on-prem in an air-gapped environment with no Internet connection can be a pain. There are some ways to do risk-based analysis, but we are still hamstrung because we do not have the Internet connection and the larger data sets that they have.

What is most valuable?

Internal tracking is helpful because we do not like to deal with multiple ticketing systems, and I am not a fan of ServiceNow. We are able to keep everything internal and utilize Enterprise Security. Internal ticketing is helpful because we can bring in all the data and have it all available. That way, we can go back and take a look at it if we find another situation. We do not have to utilize other ticketing systems for cybersecurity.

What needs improvement?

Its interface and usability can always be improved. We are running on the last version, so I have not checked out how the newest one looks. Currently, we have to track down and remember where things are located. We have new guys on the team, and sometimes they have to click around and figure out where things are.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for about five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is not going anywhere. As long as they continue to support and develop it, and not make it a cloud solution, we will continue to purchase it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have a total of 500 devices, and we ingest around 150 gigs a day.

The scalability is pretty easy. They recently enabled it to be able to go into a search head cluster. Previously, the only way to install this was on its own dedicated search and it could not be connected to a cluster. Over the last four or five years, they have been pushing harder and harder for clustering everything up for shared resources. Enterprise Security is one of the few apps where you were not allowed to do that. Having scalability with the search head cluster is nice, and it is one thing I am looking at implementing in the future.

How are customer service and support?

Splunk's support is pretty good. I contacted Splunk's support a couple of times. In total, they are helpful, and we are able to get the support where we need it, but unfortunately, it is self-inflicted because we are air-gapped. It takes me anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get the logs required. I need to get them sanitized, approved, and transferred over so that I can get them to Splunk. I would rate them a nine out of ten because a couple of times, I found the answer before they did.

They have the best documentation in all of the tech sector, and it is not behind a paywall where you cannot find information. There is certain information in Splunk Knowledge Base under the support page that I believe should be searchable through Google.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What was our ROI?

The return on investment is very good because, with ELA, we purchased the products at a reasonable price. We did not have to pay significantly more for licensing than we could possibly use. We were able to combine and get it at a much lower cost point.

In terms of the time to value, it took us a couple of months to get used to the interface and get people trained. Unfortunately, we had some turnover during that time, so we had to constantly retrain or train new people. The newer versions of Enterprise Security that came along made things a little bit easier. Luckily, we had some free training provided to us because we have an enterprise license agreement.

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

Luckily, we come under a large federal agency, and before the pandemic, they signed a large enterprise license agreement. It worked out great and to our advantage because we are a small organization. We got a 300 gig license, and we just did not have the buying power to be able to get products cheaply. Because we all partnered together under the agency umbrella, we were able to get Splunk Enterprise Security, UBA, and ITSI for cheap. This was good considering the fact that some of these premium apps require a minimum number of users, and we do not have the number of people needed to even justify buying it.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security a seven out of ten. There is definitely some room for improvement. I have not installed the newer version. Once I get into it, I will see what new capabilities there are, but there is a decent lift that is needed for the setup. Professional services help with that, but the customer generally does not like paying for that more than once.

Because of the ELA, I am able to come to Splunk conferences for free instead of having to pay my own dime. That helps tremendously, especially considering the fact that education is included. I believe that is because of the enterprise license agreement with the government contract. That helps out a lot. I have been coming to conferences since 2017. There are a lot of good people and a great community. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2499570 - PeerSpot reviewer
Electronics Engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Improved our organization's ability to ingest normalized data and dashboards let us dig deep into our actual system
Pros and Cons
  • "The site is constantly up, and it's been really easy to adjust the data."

    What is our primary use case?

    We monitor secure events and notable events in the system and watch for outside intrusion. We create a lot of dashboards to respond to these events. It's used to monitor our live system, and as things occur, such as alarms and other notifications, it's really helpful.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We've captured many security intrusions and all kinds of threats trying to access the system and cause issues, particularly with the FAA in Alaska.

    It's been great for us so far.

    Splunk Enterprise Security provides end-to-end visibility into our environment is really critical. If we don't capture these events and something happens in the system, it could cause havoc to the telecommunications system in Alaska and really mess up air traffic.

    Splunk Enterprise Security has been fantastic in helping us find any security event across multi-cloud, on-prem, or hybrid environments. I would give it a ten on ten.

    It 100% improved our organization's ability to ingest normalized data. Splunk's ability to identify and solve problems in real time has been great. We use it in real-time every single day, 24/7.

    Moreover, it helped us reduce our mean time to resolve. 

    It helped us improve our organization's business resilience. We have great impressions of its ability to predict, identify, and solve problems in real-time. 

    It 100% helps us consolidate networking, IT security, and IT and observability. Just being able to have everything in one spot together, a one-stop shop, is huge.

    What is most valuable?

    The dashboards let us dig deep into our actual system. Our system is spread throughout Alaska with about 70 sites, each with all kinds of equipment. Splunk Enterprise Security helps us mine through that data and look for security events.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using it for about ten years now. We use it in our system in Alaska. Basically, it's the software we use to do a lot of our monitoring of the system and dig deep into the data.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It's been great. The site is constantly up, and it's been really easy to adjust the data.

    How are customer service and support?

    It's been pretty good. I've never had to deal with it personally.

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

    Ever since I started here, we've been using Splunk.

    What other advice do I have?

    I'd give it a nine out of ten. There's always room for improvement, but Splunk is pretty great. It's one of our main tools.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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    reviewer2499717 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    Provides a single pane of glass platform, but it needs a better and solid configuration guide
    Pros and Cons
    • "Splunk Enterprise Security gives us a single pane of glass so that we can use just one tool instead of having to use different tools."
    • "It'd be really nice if Splunk Enterprise Security had a better and solid configuration guide."

    What is our primary use case?

    We wanted the solution to enhance the SOC ability. We were having trouble with some of our data being SIEM-compliant.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We hope the solution meets some SOC-like abilities.

    What is most valuable?

    Splunk Enterprise Security gives us a single pane of glass so that we can use just one tool instead of having to use different solutions.

    It is pretty important to our organization that Splunk Enterprise Security provides end-to-end visibility into our environment, and it gets more important every year.

    Splunk Enterprise Security has helped improve our organization’s ability to ingest and normalize data.

    It has helped us reduce our alert volume.

    Splunk's unified platform helps consolidate networking, security, and IT observability tools. It gives us a single pane of glass, so instead of having to go to different tools, we just go to one tool.

    It is deployed as an app on its own server.

    What needs improvement?

    It'd be really nice if Splunk Enterprise Security had a better and solid configuration guide.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for roughly one year.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Splunk Enterprise Security is a very stable solution, and we haven't had many issues in five years.

    How are customer service and support?

    The solution’s technical support team is very knowledgeable.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    How was the initial setup?

    It was a little difficult for us to set up the solution mainly because some of our data sources were not SIEM-compliant.

    What about the implementation team?

    We did engage with Splunk professional services, but it still didn't work. Although our experience with them was good, the tool was still not set up correctly.

    What was our ROI?

    We have seen a return on investment with Splunk Enterprise Security.

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

    My experience with the solution's setup cost, pricing, and licensing was really good.

    What other advice do I have?

    Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

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