Splunk Enterprise Security Reviews

We use it for application log monitoring.

It is a logging product. Our application generates log files, then we upload them to Splunk. We run their agent on our EC2 instances in AWS, then we view the logs through their product, and it is all stored on their infrastructure.

We have used the alerts for a lot of things. They gave us the ability to kind of make an alert simply. So, we did one for SQL injection. We also had some services which were problematic that would fail, but we figured out what log line that we could look for, so it was easy to make an alert for that.

Its usability is the best part. It is easy for our developers to use if they want to search their logs, etc.

A problem that we had recently had was we licensed it based on how much data you upload to them every day. Something changed in one our applications, and it started generating three to four times as many logs and. So now, we are trying to assemble something with parts of the Splunk API to warn ourselves, then turn it off and throttle it back more. However it would be better if they had something systematically built into the product that if you're getting close to your license, then to shut things down. This sort of thing would help out a lot. It would help them out too, because then they wouldn't be hollering at us for going over our license.

Stability has been great. I don't think we have ever had an outage from it.

We don't do a lot of searching. If there is somewhere with problems, it will probably have to be with a lot of searches, and we don't have that. We don't have many developers searching every day. It is mostly when there is a problem, then we use it for diagnostics. So, we don't put a large search load on it. However, the reliability of it has been great. It hasn't been down for us at any point.

It seems to have worked out great. We haven't had any problems yet.

I haven't used the technical support.

Before Splunk, we used Kibana and Elasticsearch. Sometimes, with them, logs wouldn't even be there. We have received an infinite time reduction there. We couldn't use what we had before, so Splunk being there and working does a lot.

The integration and configuration with the AWS environment was easy. They had the documentation. All we had to do was get their agent running on our EC2 instance, and their documentation was good for that. It worked, which was great.

The product is also integrated with PagerDuty, Slack, and AWS. Those integrations are good and seamless.

It has made life easier for us through use, then by troubleshooting problems. It reduces the cost of the intangibles.

The pricing seems good relative to the other vendors that we have had here. However, they need to find ways to be more flexible with the licensing and be able to deal with situations where we start generating more logs. Maybe having some controls in the Splunk interface to turn it off, so we don't have to change anything in our application.

We have an existing contract with Splunk, so it makes sense to stay with them for now. Our license is for a 100 GB/logs a day.

There are a lot of vendors in the space at the conference this year. Therefore, we probably talked to six or seven different ones, and the market seems to be consolidating. The market's metrics and log monitoring all seem to be rolling up into a single provider. It looks like that is what will be happening in the next few years.

Right now, there are a ton of different smaller providers doing little pieces of this and that. All the big players, like Splunk, New Relic, and Datadog, seem to be rolling them all up into one offering. 

Implement something and watch how much data you are sending to it, then have some way to shut it off without redeploying your app in case things get hairy.

We use the cloud version of the product.

Splunk helped reduce development cost since it provides free applications on Splunkbase that can save a huge amount of time and effort. It also gave us the ability to dig into logs to find not just one needle but many needles in the haystack of data, and that helped solve multiple production issues and reduced system downtime.

A great improvement brought by Splunk is the ability to remove sensitive data before displaying it in reports. This allows Splunk administrators to filter data according to the user’s clearance level.

Splunk can be seen as a huge box that allows the storage of all sorts of logs. This allows the centralization of data and makes possible new sorts of correlations that were previously impossible using traditional SIEMs such as ArcSight or QRadar. Splunk allow schema on the fly and therefore simplifies all the data onboarding process. All that leads to flexibility when it comes to defining the metadata since it is not necessary to have all the fields defined and extracted to be able to use Splunk.

Another great feature is the field extractor that allows persons with little or no experience with Regex to define fields and extract valuable information from the data.

Finally, the ability to connect with various sorts of databases, NoSQL solutions, makes it a very powerful tool, not only as a SIEM but also as a datalake for machine learning and data analysis.

Adding custom visualization in Splunk has been improved over the years but can still be made better by integrating more and more JavaScript visualization sources.

Released versions are quite stable. We encountered some visual bugs following major upgrades but that was due to custom CSS that we had edited into Splunk.

Splunk is a data analytics platform and is designed to scale easily. Adding or removing machines from a splunk index can be done without affecting any of the existing members of the infrastructure.

In my opinion Splunk has three levels of support. First level is their forum (Splunk Answers). The Forum is very rich and solves 90% of the issues that can be encountered. Then comes the real technical support team that replies quite fast, depending on the SLA. Finally comes the professional services team, which provides a very advanced level of expertise and can solve any issue.

Yes, ArcSight. We switched because of how slow the support can be with HPE sometimes and also because Splunk is simpler to use, is more data oriented, and is more adapted for business security use cases.

We started Splunk on a stand-alone server. Installing that was very easy, a basic RPM install for Linux and an installer for Windows. When we moved to a distributed environment, it was a bit more complicated but the documentation on Splunk Docs was clear and easy to use so we had no problem there.

Splunk licensing model might seem expensive but with all the gain in functionalities you will have compared to traditional SIEM solutions I think it’s worth the price. Also, when you have small volumes of data to index daily (which might account for high EPS) you will be gaining the full advantage of using Splunk for a very low price.

Yes, Graylog and QRadar.

You're in for a nice surprise, Splunk is fun, easy to use, and will give you the results you are looking for and more. It's a great tool for security and business analysis, you're looking at a big data platform that will allow a lot more than what the good old SIEMs could do.

There is a lot that we monitor with it. We monitor outbound URLs. We monitor unusual traffic, unusual user logins, and excessive user logins. We monitor whether or not users are logging in from VPN or not, what IPs they are accessing, or whether a user is signing in from multiple IP addresses minus the VPN. 

My organization was already using Splunk Enterprise Security when I was brought in, so I cannot say how it has improved the organization, but I can see that if they did not have Splunk Enterprise Security, there would be a significantly more workload. They would definitely need more manpower. Splunk Enterprise Security definitely helps with a lot of the prebuilt dashboards and other things that come with it out of the box.

Splunk Enterprise Security has reduced our mean time to resolve by 50% to 75%.

Being able to track impossible travel logins and things of that nature is valuable. We can track user logins from various IPs, various countries, and at various times to see if everything adds up. We can check to see if it makes sense that someone logged in from China and in the US within an hour.

There is machine learning with Splunk Enterprise Security, and based on the keynotes at the Splunk conference, there is going to be some AI involved as well. My biggest struggle with Splunk, in general, is memorizing all the commands. If I want to know which users have logged in between certain hours, I cannot write that query out. It would be helpful to have AI so that I can explain in simple terms what I want and then the search gives that back to me. I am waiting for that. That is going to be my bread and butter because my big thing is that I just cannot remember all those commands.

If you have a dashboard that is too large with too many searches, it tends to get bogged down. If you create various different dashboards, you can bypass the issue of not having enough resources to load all the things you need to load.

I was brought onto the team recently. They have been using it for about two years, so I am just catching up in learning as I go. All in all, my experience with Splunk and AWS is about ten months to a year.

It is very scalable.

I have not had to interact with Splunk support. Most of the issues that I ran into can be solved by reaching out to a team member.

I have not used any other similar solution previously. Prior to working with Splunk, it was just basic IT administration work involving monitoring with different tools, such as Trellix FireEye. I am not sure how to compare them with Splunk.

My organization had Splunk Enterprise Security before I got in.

I have not seen an ROI because I am not at level two, but I am sure my bosses have seen an ROI.

We have definitely seen a time to value in terms of being able to take what Splunk Enterprise gives us and view it. It gives us more information in an easier way versus us doing everything ourselves. That alone saves time. If we save one second a day over a year, we are going to save minutes, so these little bits of time add up.

The price can always be lower, but it is fair at the moment.

The cost efficiencies depend on the licensing and how much data we are bringing in. We have a fairly large footprint, so it is cost-effective.

Being at the Splunk conference and seeing all the ways in which Splunk can be used versus the way that I use Splunk is mind-blowing. It is a Pandora's box of tools. One of the things I saw today was manufacturing and the types of data that manufacturers can receive from Splunk within the technologies that they have. It is mind-blowing. Splunk is awesome.

Overall, I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for log management and security purposes.

The log management is great.

It has a very good alert tool that you can create with the logs that Splunk gets.

You can check up on security from the dashboards. We use some custom applications which we have created by ourselves. It's very helpful to have custom dashboards with knowledge of the system of what we monitor.

The initial setup is simple. 

We have found the solution to be stable.

Its scalability is quite good.

Right now, everything is good. I don't really have notes for aspects of improvement. 

There can be a bit of complexity around some fields during the initial setup. There are some places where you have to use regular expressions to parse logs. The part of parsing logs correctly is the most, let's say, difficult thing, and when this is done, all of the other things are easier. Anyway, the regex part is a very good feature and in my opinion, it should stay like it is, because it gives a lot of flexibility. Customers may learn to use it or use technical support.

The cost of the solution is a little bit high.

I've used the solution since 2016. I've used it for around six years at this point.

In terms of stability, it's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. it works well. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

We have a technical support contract.  

For the most part, we can do it probably ourselves. When technical support helps us, however, everything goes pretty smoothly. We are quite satisfied with them. We typically get immediate support and assistance.

The ease or difficulty of the initial setup depends on the infrastructure of the organization. However, when we have installed it, it was pretty simple. That said, there are some fields that are complex, and for this, we have support.

We did get support to assist us with a few complex fields.

We pay a yearly license. You do need to set up a contract for technical support.

While I don't have details about the exact pricing, my understanding is that it can be a bit expensive. 

We are a customer and an end-user.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been very happy with its capabilities in general. 

The only downside is the pricing. If the price would be lower, you would have the possibility to buy more capacity for parsing logs per day. In Splunk, you have a daily limit of logs that will be parsed. If you place that limit several times, the Splunk license will be blocked and you have to talk with support to get a recovery license. With the capacity, you can include, let's say, 30 servers, but if you want to include another 20 servers, you have to buy an additional license, which is very costly.

That said, for medium and large enterprise businesses it's really necessary to have. Even in smaller businesses, it is good to have. It's just the price that would stop small businesses from taking it on. 

If a small business has less than 500 MB logs/day, they may use a splunk free license.

As there is no SIEM solution here at present, we are building it up through the assistance of a vendor. In the past I worked in the Splunk Cloud, which was seven-point something. With QRadar I worked on version 7.3. 

We use Splunk Cloud as a SIEM solution and to monitor traffic and the network for detection purposes. We can create use cases so that if the solution picks up on anything entering our organization, the malicious IP can be blocked. 

In respect of ones which are suspicious, based on the logs we pull from the data source, we can build the use cases accordingly and have our analysts work on these. 

In the several years I have worked with the solution, I have felt there to be a need for practice of queries and understanding. As with other areas needing practice, the more one learns and practices, the easier things become. 

While this is not terribly difficult, it is so when compared with QRadar. This holds true when we don't know the queries at all. Other than this, it is a great tool. 

The solution should also have more advanced capabilities in comparison with QRadar, which offers Watson. The product should have add-ons. 

The solution is stable and reliable. 

The solution is easy to scale, to add on and to integrate with other solutions. I am familiar with app integrations. Many solutions can be integrated with Splunk Cloud, such as CrowdStrike or Symantec. 

The solution's response time is not that fast. The experience of some of my peers is that the vendors have actively offered help. By contrast, when I tried Splunk Cloud's technical support I did not receive a response. 

We have not yet undertaken deployment. For the moment, we are on the EPS and discussing the proposed structure with the vendors. Our team is conducting talks with the vendors of QRadar. 

We are exploring multiple avenues in search of a one-SIEM solution. 

I am not in a position to comment on the pricing. 

By comparison, I feel QRadar to be better than Splunk Cloud, since it comes with Watson. 

Another advantage is that QRadar works like a threat intelligence tool. It, also, does not require queries, which Splunk Cloud does. It is important that we have an understanding of the queries for the purpose of pulling the logs which we seek. I feel QRadar to be better than Splunk Cloud, as it does not require us to work on the queries. 

I have worked on Splunk Cloud in the past, as well as on QRadar. As there is no SIEM solution in my current organization, we have plans to build it up. This is an ongoing process. I have suggested QRadar to my team and others are considering Sentinel. 

The solution is deployed on-cloud. 

I would recommend the solution to others since there are a couple of companies with many clients that are looking for Splunk Cloud, with which they are familiar. We must consider client demands when it comes to attracting projects. 

Even in India, most of the companies employ Splunk Cloud as the most prevalently used SIEM solution. Then comes QRadar, which is easier. So too, Splunk is less cost-effective than QRadar, although it is more in demand. There are a couple of companies with call centers that request Splunk Cloud. 

I rate Splunk Cloud as a seven out of ten. 

We use Splunk on-premise. We mostly use it for log analysis and fraud detection. We are also testing using it in machine learning and other solutions. We have 10 people managing Splunk and we have approximately 150 people using the product in total.

With Splunk, we got more insights out of our data as it includes machine and secure data. It also has a logging attendance system and this helps to protect our resources from any  attackers hacking system information at a granular level

The logging features are useful as are the dashboards and alerts in addition to the organization of data. It has options for creating dashboards and alerts. You can also create queries in the SQL language. Splunk is a user-friendly solution.

Index performance is a bit slow but this is partly due to the huge volumes of data for our industry within our environment This makes the index very large and inefficient in terms of performance. Performance could be improved to cater to this, however. We have also had problems with the compatibility between Splunk and other systems. We have previously been on 5.3 and migrated to 5.5. We are now planning to migrate to version 7.7. It has been difficult to find documentation about the compatibility with Linux. In terms of the interface, it could include some improvements for the look and feel.

We have been using Splunk for one year in our infrastructure environment.

The users access the native cloud solution. So we are taking advantage of the native cloud solution provided, and by using the gentle scaling approach this has helped stability.

We scaled up gradually from three processes up to five, and the performance is okay. So we used gentle scaling  but this also helped stability.

We have used Splunk tech support often. If we have a critical issue such as server down or frequently occurring issues they are always reliable and provide us with solutions to our problems. Technical support for Splunk is good.

Setup is complex. We tried to cluster five indexes. This helped us migrate our data into the Splunk environment. We are using 20 applications which make use of this indexed data. The actual deployment took us about two to three weeks because of some problems getting the data into the system.

We worked with a Splunk consultant who shadowed us to help ensure we performed the process correctly. 

Licencing occurs yearly. We now have a three-yearly support contract as of now.  Licensing is a yearly, one-time cost.

We considered a few alternative products because the logging was faster. In the end, we decided to go to Splunk.

I would definitely recommend Splunk. We will review performance within two years of our three-year contract and then decide at that point what other aspects we need to consider. I would rate Splunk 8 out of 10.

We are a software development company and Splunk is one of the products that we have implemented for our clients. It is used for log analytics as well as the mobile SDK for checking the stability of mobile applications.

It's the completeness of the solution that we like the most. It has a solution for backend log analytics, but also one for mobile applications.

Our two main complaints are about the difficulty of the initial setup and the licensing model.

The billing model is a little bit complicated because you have to predict in advance how much data you'll have and how much storage you'll need. When you start, you don't really have those numbers but to get the licensing, you need them. It is only at that point that you'll know how much the product is going to cost you.

I have been working with Splunk for more than five years.

There have been no issues in particular. What we are using has not been that heavy.

We have not had any problems with respect to scalability.

Based on when we have been in contact with them, I think that technical support was fine.

I'm not sure if they have different support models but I think it took a long time for them to respond. It may be a consequence of the support contract our client had with them.

This is a complicated product to use and you need constant help to set it up. I really wish that it was easier to set up and use.

We do not have any dedicated people who are working on Splunk, but we have a team of approximately 100 people that are responsible for the development of mobile applications, backend systems, DevOps, etc.

I think that most of the log analytics solutions are expensive and I'm not sure if it's worth it. However, I wish that they were less expensive. I am not talking about a single product but rather, all of the ones that are in the domain of log analytics.

Splunk is a good product but I would definitely tell people to analyze their requirements to see if Splunk fits their use case, or not. The licensing model is very complicated, so if there is a product that has a better licensing model then it would probably be good to start with that. Then, later on, if the product is not working well enough, then they can switch to Splunk. At that point, they will have knowledge of the data they are using and will understand the costs that they might incur while using it. 

The only way that I would suggest somebody use this as their first solution is if they already had all of the data that is required to get a cost estimate.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Splunk provided me a platform to analyze both infrastructure loads and application performance for quick troubleshooting saving a load of time. Versatile apps at Splunkbase helped me to better configure and enhance visualization of the KPIs in my application.

• Splunk has reduced application downtime by helping identify the point of failure.
• It has helped in identifying information streaming bottlenecks. 
• Its machine learning capabilities along with custom script implementation has helped the organization a lot.
• Visualizations helped the organisation have a better understanding of its KPIs. 

Its huge, versatile AppBase helped me to configure and bring data from different sources to a unified platform. 

• Custom visualizations are real hard. While the default visualizations are good, creating enhanced visualizations are complex.
• Configuring a few apps is complex, not straightforward.

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

Splunk setup is easy and straightforward. 

Splunk is a bit pricier, but the benefits and ROI are huge.

We also evaluated ELK, Dynatrace, and New Relic, but Splunk provided a comprehensive solution to fit our all around needs.