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MD MASRURUL HODA - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
The Smooth User Experience Currently Offered Can Further Be Enhanced By Offering Customization Options To Its Users
Pros and Cons
  • "Before its use, analyzing each email would take at least 15 to 20 minutes, with some complex cases taking up to 30 minutes...With the automation provided by Splunk Phantom, we could significantly reduce the amount of time and human effort required to complete this task."
  • "The technical support for the Splunk SIEM solution was average."

What is our primary use case?

As part of the cybersecurity incident response team, we were responsible for handling phishing emails related to business-as-usual operations. It was a manual process that would include five to six checks to determine the category of the email, its legitimacy, if it was malicious, and if it was an impersonation or a phishing email. We also worked on a use case for our infrastructure's proxy solutions. End users would request that certain websites be unblocked, as they had been blocked by the proxy's default policy or categorically blocked by the proxy. For this, we evaluated publicly available information about the website and the justification provided by the users, to determine whether the website should be whitelisted or made accessible.

Then, we implemented the automation process to simplify such tedious processes. In addition, we had a manual process in place for our threat hunting and threat intelligence platform, where we monitored leaked data on the dark web. This was documented as a use case. Our account management team also conducted weekly checks on the status of accounts. The process also made the team check if they were logged in on their accounts and if the account was disabled, which were manual processes that were later integrated into Splunk SOAR.

How has it helped my organization?

As a security analyst in the SOC center, I have seen the impact of implementing Splunk SOAR on our phishing email analysis process. Before its use, analyzing each email would take at least 15 to 20 minutes, with some complex cases taking up to 30 minutes. Of all the emails received, 30% were complex, 50% were average, and 20% were straightforward and would only take five to ten minutes to analyze. With the automation provided by Splunk SOAR, we can significantly reduce the amount of time and human effort required to complete this task. Instead of two analysts taking two to three hours to analyze 20 to 30 emails, one analyst can now complete the same task within one to two hours.

What is most valuable?

The most advantageous feature of Splunk SOAR is its ease of writing search queries, which can be attributed to Splunk's powerful analytics tool running in the background, offering a smooth user experience.

What needs improvement?

Improvements are needed in automation options as customization is limited, which may make complex use cases challenging despite the solution being able to meet basic requirements.

Currently, the tool only allows categorization into two categories, malicious and non-malicious, which has been identified as a limitation by security analysts in various group brainstorming sessions. The ability to create custom categories for emails can benefit security analysts.

Buyer's Guide
Splunk SOAR
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Splunk SOAR. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
831,369 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I was associated with this solution for almost three years. In my previous organization, Meredith, we initially deployed Splunk. Before that, we were using the ArcSight SIEM solution. Later on, after moving on to the Splunk environment, Meredith thought of opting for an automation process. So, we onboarded Splunk SOAR, but the user Splunk was managed by a third-party company.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, it is good. It doesn't have any downtime issues. If you consider Splunk SOAR as an independent solution to be deployed at work, then that would not be easy. The challenge is that Splunk SOAR cannot work without the Splunk SIEM solution. But if you have Splunk as your base, then Splunk Phantom works well. So the issues with Splunk Phantom are very minimal. I would rate it an eight on a scale of one to 10, where one is considered the worst and 10 is the best.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In terms of scalability, I believe Splunk SOAR is decent. I haven't encountered any stability issues, even with a large infrastructure of over 10,000 end-user devices and high log inflows. I would rate its scalability as an eight or nine out of ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best. It works well in both large and small work environments.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support for the Splunk SIEM solution was average. Splunk is still working on improving its customer support, as they do not directly support SOAR, which is a separate entity. Other vendors, on the other hand, support various environments. I believe that Splunk can improve its customer support services.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

I previously used Demisto, a security automation tool, in one of my previous organizations, Dell Technologies. The ease of writing custom queries and making granular modifications were the key reasons why we used it. In my next organization, I used Splunk SOAR because we already had Splunk in our environment. Currently, I am working in a bank that does not have a Splunk environment, so I am using a different automation tool.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment warranted collecting information on the external and internal parameters of our network system. A network engineer along with a team of four to five people from Hurricane Labs was involved in the deployment of the Splunk SIEM solution for the company. The deployment of the Splunk SIEM solution took approximately six to nine months. During the first three months, the team familiarized themselves with the environment and started the transition from an off-site setup. Over the next six to nine months, the team worked to mature the solution and address any issues with logs not being collected properly and displayed on the Splunk screen.

What about the implementation team?

Splunk SIEM was deployed by a third-party vendor. The vendor was responsible for the end-to-end deployment and was the main point of contact for the project. However, I am not familiar with the specific details of the deployment and therefore cannot accurately explain how the deployment of the solution was done.

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

In terms of pricing, I would rate it a six or seven out of 10, where one is the highest and 10 is the lowest. It’s on the expensive side, and I'm not sure if a lot of the small-sized organizations will be able to afford it. A medium enterprise environment will be able to afford it. We had to pay for the cost of the licenses for the services we received.

What other advice do I have?

If you use Splunk as your SIEM solution, you can consider Splunk SOAR as your automation tool. However, automation tools such as AutomationEdge or Demisto may provide better value if you have other SIEM solutions.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten.

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?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Security Architect at University of Maryland
Real User
Takes most of the work away, but the time they take to implement new features is a little bit of concern
Pros and Cons
  • "The playbooks are valuable. They are the core component. Being able to implement and build a code process to work through and scale out what we want to do is valuable."
  • "have put a number of ideas on the ideas.splunk.com site for feature requests for the Splunk SOAR product. I posted one of them about three years ago, which finally got implemented in the latest release that just got announced, so the time to implement new features and things like that is a little bit concerning."

What is our primary use case?

We have a couple of different use cases. A lot of it started out in our security space, and we have use cases related to our legal and withhold process. We manage and handle our phishing and spam activity as well as our digital or any copyright act complaints.

We have a multi-cloud implementation, but most of our use cases that are currently implemented tend to not be specific to monitoring our cloud environments.

How has it helped my organization?

A lot of it comes down to the time and effort savings. For what we are doing with Splunk SOAR, a human would take a lot more time. Some things are very repetitive, and with Splunk SOAR, it might take a little bit of work to get that human work translated to the programming language or functions inside a playbook, but it allows us to take all that workload off that person and be able to do more with that one person.

For some of our actions, there has been about a 300% increase in productivity. For a lot of the use cases that we have implemented inside of Splunk SOAR, there is not as much to resolve. There are mostly actions where if something happens, it should go and do something, so it is automating that human process. It takes most of the work away from the person.

We have been able to benefit from a decreased workload on our limited staff. That same staff has been able to do more things because they are not having to do the work that this tool is doing.

Splunk SOAR has had no bearing on our resiliency.

What is most valuable?

The playbooks are valuable. They are the core component. Being able to implement and build a code process to work through and scale out what we want to do is valuable.

What needs improvement?

I have put a number of ideas on the ideas.splunk.com site for feature requests for the Splunk SOAR product. I posted one of them about three years ago, which finally got implemented in the latest release that just got announced, so the time to implement new features and things like that is a little bit concerning. I tend to post my ideas there so that other people in the community can see the features or ideas. They can then upvote them and make comments on them. I thought that is what the site is for.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Splunk SOAR for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Overall, the stability of the product in terms of day-to-day operations is great. It is 100%, but because of the inter-dynamic and connected nature of SOAR, it relies on other services. When those services have changes or issues, it impacts SOAR, but SOAR, unfortunately, does not always handle them very well. It might look like there is a problem in SOAR or in the playbook or process that happened, but it might be a third party that caused it. Unfortunately, it requires someone to go into SOAR and fix something and do rework because, ultimately, that is the interconnection point where it fails.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have not designed our SOAR to scale. I am just going to grow it as big as it can until finally, I need to split it. We are not that large, so I do not know whether it will scale well or not.

How are customer service and support?

Overall, it has been great. We have not had any major bugs or incidents that have required anything more than requesting copies of the code for apps to make the additional changes that we need. Overall, the organization has been very good with that. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We had no other automation or orchestration technology prior to Splunk SOAR.

How was the initial setup?

It was complex. Several of our use cases required modifications to existing SOAR apps, meaning new features had to be coded or added to the SOAR app support we wanted to do. Additional custom bits of code had to be created. At the time, we first implemented a lot of the features that are there in the product now, but they were not there. If we had waited two years to do the initial implementation, we probably would have got a much faster time to value because a lot of the work went in early on to build out features, but then they came out with a whole new version of it. The sad part is that for upgrading to the latest version of Splunk SOAR, we had to migrate from Python 2 to Python 3, so the process by which those playbooks and other things get migrated is difficult and requires a lot of work and rework.

What about the implementation team?

We did have a Splunk professional involved in our initial setup. I believe it was a direct Splunk employee. I do not believe it was a third-party person. They were good. 

We have a lot of Splunk knowledge. We have complex use cases. We have a high level of knowledge. We did not want someone who just came out of the training class. They had to send us someone who was going to be valuable to us, and they did.

What was our ROI?

It is hard to quantify whether we have seen a return on investment. The expectation is that we do, but we are so short on staffing that it is difficult to calculate whether it is giving us a full FTE worth of a person. We think we are getting it, but we do not have good numbers to say that we are.

It is also hard to say whether we have seen time to value because there are some use cases that take so long to implement. Because of the way that SOAR is structured and interconnected with so many systems, to get something going and then make sure it continues to work, the time to value starts to become a little bit back and forth. Some of the use cases are great. The services underneath them have not changed. There has not been a lot of transition, but with the other ones, such as an API update, an update is required on the SOAR side, so it is a little harder.

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

When we first purchased our Splunk SOAR license, it was based on an event-count model. It was based on the number of events. I had strong opinions at the time that automation should not be stifled by the amount of automation you can accomplish, so the previous structure was not as beneficial for us. Later that year, we got told or saw at a conference that they announced user-based pricing.

We are now in a renewal period, so we migrated to a user-based license model, which is more appropriate for us so that we no longer have to worry about stifling our automation based on the quantity. If I have an event that happens 500 times a day, but it is relatively minor, I can still spend the effort to automate it. The previous model meant that we could only automate high-value items in Splunk SOAR, meaning they had a large cost of the human factor to automate them, whereas now, I can transition. I can do many different things with Splunk SOAR that we were intentionally limited on.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had evaluated other options twice. We evaluated before the acquisition by Palo Alto and then during our latest renewal period, we went ahead and reevaluated Palo Alto's competing products just to make sure that we are doing our due diligence about technology and whether this was going to be better or worse for us.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate Splunk SOAR a six out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Splunk SOAR
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Splunk SOAR. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
831,369 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SOC analyst at Bkav Corp.
Real User
Top 20
Enabled us to reduce the use of other tools
Pros and Cons
  • "Splunk integrates with so many products. It provides us with good information for us to be able to do our jobs."
  • "I haven't had any issues with the solution so far."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use the solution for incident investigations. 

What is most valuable?

We can make custom playbooks and use the Playbook Editor to do so. The Playbook is my favorite feature, it's quite useful. There are a lot of automation capabilities.

Its visibility is good. It's end-to-end. We can see incidents across our environment. We've been satisfied with the level of visibility so far. 

The automation helps save us time. We've saved a lot of time researching incidents. If we do resolutions manually, it can take up to 15 minutes. With Splunk's automation and Playbook, we can resolve issues within two to three minutes. 

We have Splunk integrated with other tools and systems. Some are using, for example, Carbon Black EDR. It's very flexible. It works with various third-party tools. Which we use depends on the customer. 

The solution provides good business resilience. It helps with real-time detection and resolutions. With automation, our real-time alerting is quite good. 

Splunk integrates with many products. It provides us with good information for us to be able to do our jobs.

We have been able to reduce the use of other tools. When we use Splunk, we tend to just focus on Splunk's findings, only. We do a lot of investigations using Splunk. It makes the process easier. 

We've noticed a reduction in security event volume. It's helped us to reduce a lot. We've been able to reduce the mean time to detect by 30% to 40%. It's also helped us reduce the mean time to resolve by almost 50% to 60%. We have a lot of customers and a lot of alerts typically, so we've always had a lot to deal with. 

What needs improvement?

I haven't had any issues with the solution so far. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for three months.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is really scalable. We are using it across multiple customers and handle multiple alerts. 

How are customer service and support?

We are able to connect with support if we have issues. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

Right now, we also have IBM. However, mostly, we use Splunk. Our customers prefer Splunk over IBM thanks to the playbooks on offer. The appearance of Splunk is also better. Splunk has a strong reputation in the space. It makes investigations easier.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment process is straightforward. Our deployment team will deploy it for customers. It will take two to three days, depending on our customer's servers. 

We can train employees on how to use Playbooks within two months. 

What about the implementation team?

We help our clients deploy Splunk. 

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

The cost is as expected. It can be a bit high, however, we get a better rate between us and our third party. We provide services to clients if they purchase Splunk SOAR which gives them good value. 

What other advice do I have?

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
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Ryan Plas - PeerSpot reviewer
SOAR Engineer at Accenture Federal Services
Real User
Top 20
Offers playbook automation that helps reduce the manual and tedious work for users
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of the solution is the playbook automation just because it allows us to reduce the manual actions that SOC has to handle."
  • "Improving the integration ecosystem can raise the quality of the bottom tier of the integrations so that they can work better out of the box."

What is our primary use case?

My company operates as an MSSP that takes care of the detection and response for our customers. Splunk SOAR is where our company does the alert processing, and it is also where our SOC does its work. I work on developing the playbooks and apps that we use.

How has it helped my organization?

The product has improved the working of our company since it has removed a lot of the tedious work that we had to do previously. Even some of the easy stuff gets automated. Our company's analysts can really focus their hours on work that requires critical thinking, creative skills, and other similar areas.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of the solution is the playbook automation just because it allows us to reduce the manual actions that SOC has to handle. When it comes to some of the workbook functionality where the analyst has to take some manual action, we can guide that process through templates and other things.

What needs improvement?

I think some of the case management functionality could be improved. Improving the integration ecosystem can raise the quality of the bottom tier of the integrations so that they can work better out of the box. In general, our company is pretty happy with the tool.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk SOAR for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The tool's stability is fairly good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

When it comes to the scalability, I think we have seen some issues there, such as running into some hardware bottlenecks sometimes, but I am detached from that part of the deployment, so I can't go into details on the things I have seen, but I know there are some pain points for our company. As we scale up the tool in our company, we are not really sure how to scale up in a better manner.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and technical support have been great. We had some professional support come out when we set it up, and they were super helpful in helping us with the use cases and getting us stood up quickly. When our company reached out to the support team with some technical issues, I didn't hear any complaints about the responses from their end, so I think it was good.

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

I have not used any other solutions in the past.

How was the initial setup?

I have done the deployment personally in my lab but not in a production environment.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My company evaluated Siemplify, which is known as Chronicle SOAR. My company has also evaluated Demisto and Cortex XSOAR. Our company is heavily invested in Splunk's ecosystem, and I think that was the biggest draw, especially since we use Splunk Enterprise Security and similar tools, so adding another Splunk tool made sense for our company. I think the product felt mature, and the plug-in ecosystem was where we needed it to be, along with the ability for the community to submit and create their own integrations and apps, which was interesting for us.

What other advice do I have?

When it comes to Splunk SOAR's ability to provide end-to-end visibility into our company's cloud-native environment, I would say that we are not using the cloud portions of it. I don't know if that's super relevant to what we are doing in our organization.

I am 100 percent sure that Splunk SOAR helped reduce your mean time to resolve, but I don't have any metrics on hand but I know it has dramatically decreased.

The tool has helped with the business resilience part. I think having it as a platform has been a solid portion of the product that we offer to people.

Spunk SOAR has definitely saved my time in alert triage. When some of the tedious enrichment and lookup stuff happens, the analyst doesn't have to deal with such areas, and they can just jump in and see relevant data all in one pane of glass, which has been super helpful for speeding things up.

The unified platform helps consolidate networking, security, and IT observability tools. The consolidation of tools impacts our organization as it just helps focus the SOC analyst on a single unified place to find information. It helps keep things streamlined and regular so they know where to look for certain stuff they want. It really helps people with training. It is a really easy tool to onboard people into because everything is right there in the product itself.

The product is really great. I would love to see more SOAR innovation going into the tool, especially the on-premises version since it is what we use in our company. I feel the tool needs to encourage continuous improvements, but as a product itself, my company is really happy with the solution.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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reviewer2182467 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Security Engineering and Operations at a legal firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
We can enrich alerts by pulling in more information about each user
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the way Splunk interacts with various systems via the API. The ability to integrate Splunk with our ticketing system has been an immense help because we can maintain our workflow while blending Splunk with our support desk and other ways that we track work."
  • "We have playbooks written to extract these events and put them into the workflow since it wasn't structured as expected. It was a miss for us. We couldn't figure out why it broke or what actually happened there. It was something in this feed with legitimate and security events, so we tried to understand the names and what we would call them."

What is our primary use case?

My company has two use cases for Splunk SOAR. We use it to enrich alarms by pulling in outside sources of information. Splunk can also automate actions while ensuring they are structured and reproducible.

How has it helped my organization?

With SOAR, you build a workflow, so you think ahead about all the steps that can be automated for a specific type of investigation. You need to do a decent amount of work in advance so that it does exactly what you tell it to. We need to gather a lot of essential details for our incidents. For example, if we're investigating a suspicious email, we need to gather a lot of information about who the user is.

We can enrich alerts by pulling in more information about each user. We can see their locations, roles, etc. Having that knowledge may influence our decisions or analysis. We can also submit files to be reviewed and get the results. It's akin to a doctor ordering diagnostic testing. The doctor can use the results to make decisions. 

Splunk has benefited us from that perspective, but it takes some effort upfront to think about the flow and build it out. It reduces some of our manual research by offering additional context for events. I can pull the files, automatically submit them to a sandbox, have it run, and get the results from the sandbox. I don't have to notify one of my engineers and tell them to get this file I submitted to the sandbox. 

It also improves ticketing because we can notify users when suspicious emails are quarantined and ensure a ticket is associated with it. We constantly track the work. We can close the ticket when the issue is resolved and release the email if it's legitimate. Splunk helps us document the entire process.

Splunk reduced our detection time a little by helping us quickly differentiate between an actual event and a false alarm. I don't view SOAR as a detection mechanism in itself. The events still occur. It helps enrich alerts so we can distinguish between actual events and noise. 

For every event, it saves the responding staffer about 15 to 20 minutes because they need to do less data entry. They need to do the research and follow our procedure for a ticket. It takes time to assign a ticket and make entries. Finally, they need to perform an assessment and close the ticket.  

Splunk SOAR frees up our staff to work on other things to a degree. There is always more than enough work, and somehow the volume still feels like it's always crazy. Still, it allows people to do some other tasks. It will enable my engineers to focus on more thought-provoking problems instead of menial tasks. I want them to spend time learning the underlying mechanism in case SOAR goes down. 

If Splunk is unavailable for whatever reason, I always want to have someone who understands the mechanics of what it does. At the same time, it improves retention if you can eliminate some mind-numbing work and allow them to focus on challenging items. Your employees will be happier in general. They can do some more unusual, engaging work that enables them to learn and grow. 

We couldn't consolidate any tools by using Splunk SOAR because everything was manual before we implemented it. We didn't have an automation tool. 

What is most valuable?

I like the way Splunk interacts with various systems via the API. The ability to integrate Splunk with our ticketing system has been an immense help because we can maintain our workflow while blending Splunk with our support desk and other ways that we track work.

What needs improvement?

Sometimes we flag events based on conditions in the app or service that is sending us the feed, and we focused on a couple. We get some normal events, but we also see some security issues occasionally in the same feed. I don't know if they injected this or if this was the first time we saw it. There was another type that was security-related, but we didn't know about it before. 

We have playbooks written to extract these events and put them into the workflow since it wasn't structured as expected. It was a miss for us. We couldn't figure out why it broke or what actually happened there. It was something in this feed with legitimate and security events, so we tried to understand the names and what we would call them.

It was a unique time. That goes back to an inability to detect these kinds of events. API documentation is typically a weak spot. Many vendors focus on the product first and save the API information for the very last. 

Splunk's integration isn't bad. However, it comes down to which APIs are available. For example, I would like to automate file extraction, and a particular vendor seems to have an API that should do that, but I can't. You're at the mercy of the vendors. While APIs probably leverage more than ever, it's still like pulling teeth to get some vendors to support it correctly. Nevertheless, it's highly beneficial when it works.

Depending on the playbook, it can sometimes get a little crazy and overwhelming, but I think it's generally okay.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Splunk SOAR for about a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Splunk is relatively stable. We had an issue early on. It was a bug. Splunk sorted it out. Our uptime has been consistent. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues with scalability. 

What was our ROI?

It took a little time before we realized Splunk SOAR's value. I have one engineer who dedicated himself to building many of our playbooks and a lot of the automation that we have. Another engineer is only starting out. 

You need to have the right mindset so that you don't get scope creep. It's critical to manage what you want to do because you're dealing with a blank slate. There are costs like computation time, but it's relatively straightforward. You need to be thoughtful and take your time to do everything in small chunks. It took us a while to get going with SOAR because we have to integrate our devices. It isn't a turnkey solution. 

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

I don't remember Splunk SOAR's price off the top of my head. Still, I believe it was a solid value because of the time saved, consistent results that are reproducible, integration with multiple systems, etc. The benefits justify the cost. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn't seriously consider other options. We looked at what was happening in our environment, and our SIEM is a hub for our security operations. Palo Alto is another vendor we use, so we briefly looked at their SOAR solution. However, it wasn't in the right position to work with the Splunk piece. Splunk gathers all the log material. We can act on that and interface with all of our key security devices because they have rich associations with multiple security vendors. It made more sense for us to focus on that.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Splunk SOAR a nine out of ten. If you're thinking about implementing the solution, you should consider which events will save you the most time. Think about the procedures you're following today and where you can benefit the most from automation. 

The second piece is thinking about the other solutions involved and the capabilities they offer. Do you have the API access to automate what you want? Your success depends on those vendors and sorting that stuff out. You must also approach your SOAR playbooks and workflows in a modular way. Don't try to handle everything upfront. 

It's best to automate piece by piece. You don't need to tackle an entire ecosystem right off the bat. Take what you can and constantly improve it as you grow more comfortable. Splunk SOAR's strength comes from its interactions with other systems. Ensure that you're fully leveraging that.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Principal Security Engineer at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Integrates well, and uses custom Python code, but the UI has room for improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The best feature is the integration and the custom Python code that we can write. Splunk SOAR provides us with both of these capabilities, allowing us to integrate different security solutions with Splunk SOAR and take remediation actions directly on those security tools."
  • "There is a lot of room for improvement with the UI."

What is our primary use case?

We utilize Splunk SOAR to automate our incident response process. I am the sole engineer in my current organization, responsible for working on Splunk to automate the incident response process followed by our team. This involves investigating various incident response procedures established within our security operations center.

The main problem we want to solve is the time it takes to invoice tickets and remediate incidents. Therefore, we aim to reduce that time. If our analysts manually handle and investigate each incident, it will take longer compared to using this solution, which automates most of the processes. Whenever an incident occurs, the playbook and Splunk automatically initiate the necessary actions to gather the required data, enabling the analyst to make informed decisions and address the incident promptly.

How has it helped my organization?

Creating a playbook using the Solutions Playbook Editor, is relatively easy if we possess some knowledge of Python code and the ability to write various types of flow diagrams.

The visibility of the solution's playbook viewer is excellent. There is adequate documentation that assists individuals in learning how to utilize the playbook to construct solutions.

Splunk SOAR's ability to integrate with other systems and applications in our environment is straightforward. It has numerous capabilities to integrate with various security tools, as it supports open APIs. If the solution supports the API, we only need to write the corresponding APIs in the pipeline code and utilize those API tools to construct the integration, enabling us to take action accordingly.

The most significant improvement I have observed is time-saving in the Security Operations Center incidents. We receive approximately a thousand to eleven hundred incidents per day, and if we were to manually investigate these incidents, we would require a team of ten to twelve people. However, by utilizing Splunk SOAR, we are able to handle the investigation of these thousand alerts with just six or seven people.

Splunk SOAR is not difficult to use in an investigation; it depends on the use case. I haven't encountered any issues with the implementation of the case solution, and there don't seem to be any limitations in that regard.

Splunk SOAR assists us in reducing the volume of security events. Whenever an incident occurs, the playbook initiates actions simultaneously with its generation in our security operations center. These incidents are automatically handled by the playbook, while incidents requiring manual intervention are assigned to our analysts. All other incidents are handled automatically through Splunk SOAR playbooks. Splunk SOAR has reduced the security event volume by forty-five percent.

Our mean time to detect has been drastically reduced. Before Splunk SOAR our security operation center, analysts worked on a queue. Whenever an alert was received, it was placed in a queue, and the incidents were investigated one by one. However, with the implementation of Splunk SOAR, we now have instant knowledge and analysts can start investigating more effectively. The required data is already gathered by the playbook itself, aiding analysts in making more accurate decisions in less time. This has resulted in a reduction of our mean time to detection by at least eighty percent. Previously, without Splunk SOAR, we experienced significant mean time to detect because analysts had to focus on one incident at a time, leaving other incidents waiting. Now, there is no need for incidents to wait for an analyst to take over. The playbook automatically gathers the data, allowing the analyst to have all the necessary information as soon as they start, enabling them to make prompt decisions.

Splunk SOAR has helped reduce our mean time to resolve. The resolution of incidents sometimes depends on different teams that need to investigate and send notifications for action. However, the notification of those incidents has been significantly reduced, and we can confidently say that we have achieved a fifty percent reduction in our mean time to resolve.

Fifty percent of our IT staff's time is saved through using Splunk SOAR, and we can utilize that time to work on the other project we have.

Splunk SOAR has saved our organization forty-five percent of our time.

What is most valuable?

The best feature is the integration and the custom Python code that we can write. Splunk SOAR provides us with both of these capabilities, allowing us to integrate different security solutions with Splunk SOAR and take remediation actions directly on those security tools. Additionally, we can write our own Python code, which can be used and embedded in a Splunk SOAR playbook, enabling us to utilize that code directly within the solution itself.

What needs improvement?

There is a lot of room for improvement with the UI. 

I would like to have more integrations with cloud technologies and functionalities such as AI within Splunk SOAR.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk SOAR for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Splunk SOAR is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk SOAR is a hundred percent scalable.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward and took approximately three hours. Four individuals from our network team and one individual from the Splunk personal service team were required for the deployment as we needed to configure the server.

What was our ROI?

We have observed approximately a forty-five percent return on investment with Splunk SOAR.

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

Splunk SOAR is more expensive compared to other options for SOAR.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We assessed various open-source options prior to choosing Splunk SOAR, such as Securonix SOAR and Shuffle.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk SOAR a seven out of ten. The solution necessitates expertise in Python coding, which is challenging to find in individuals. Additionally, Splunk SOAR lacks sufficient AI integration.

Before using Splunk SOAR, it took us approximately six hours to block certain IPs on our firewalls. However, after implementing Splunk SOAR, we were able to accomplish the same task within just five minutes.

We deployed Splunk SOAR on a single server.

We have around nine people that use Splunk SOAR in our organization.

Maintenance is sometimes required based on the incident volume we receive. If we experience a higher volume, we need to maintain the RAM and other components in our server. Therefore, it is important for us to exercise caution in this regard.

I highly recommend Splunk SOAR for individuals seeking to automate the incident response process in their security operation centers.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

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

Other
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2508657 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Easy to create playbooks and has saved alert triage time
Pros and Cons
  • "Its ability to integrate with other systems and applications in our environment is pretty easy. Sometimes if we see any complexity we try to involve a consultant to help us. Everything is through the built-in app. Splunk can connect to any assets through the built-in app. It could be in a platform, firewalls, or endpoints. It's easy if it's an app integration."
  • "The font used in the interface could be changed and made easier to read."

What is our primary use case?

We were using Splunk primarily to ingest data from different sources and do an analysis based on its information. We use Splunk SOAR now because we had some incidents where end users were trying to send a bulk of emails from their office email address to their personal email address. SOAR will help us based on the configuration we do. 

When you use your company email address to send emails to your personal email address or elsewhere, you're trying to link the complete confidential data. It's a risk. SOAR is the first step for DLP. We can have alerts set up where we can see if somebody's trying to send more than a fixed number of emails. The next steps happen in terms of implementing DLP.

What is most valuable?

I'm the director. I have a technical team who works on it. I give instructions on how to implement it. We are in the beginning stages.

I like the interface. 

From what I heard from the team, it's pretty easy to create playbooks. With the app, you can easily view an app code. You can look at the log results and troubleshoot. The app can be enabled to suit your needs. As our SOC evolves, we can make changes or customize it according to our needs in SOAR.

SOAR offers end-to-end visibility across our full environment. It really depends on what sources we are ingesting. If you don't have data sources, ingesting into Splunk, which does not cover end-to-end, then, obviously, SOAR will not give you what you're looking for. SOAR will help the best depending on what you ingest into Splunk.

The ability to troubleshoot with SOAR is excellent. 

Its ability to integrate with other systems and applications in our environment is pretty easy. Sometimes if we see any complexity we try to involve a consultant to help us. Everything is through the built-in app. Splunk can connect to any assets through the built-in app. It could be in a platform, firewalls, or endpoints. It's easy if it's an app integration.

We will slowly see improvements in our business resilience once we have everything configured fully.

SOAR saved time in alert triage by around 30%.

SOAR is easy to use in an investigation. It also helped to reduce our security event volume by 50%.

It reduced our mean time to detect by 60-70%.

We have seen time to value. It's a work in progress.

We can set up alerts and get emails, so we can immediately respond to whatever data source or issue is causing it.

What needs improvement?

I would like to have a better user guide to explain how to use it. 

The font used in the interface could be changed and made easier to read. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using SOAR for a few months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would give stability and scalability a nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

We have not used support for SOAR yet. 

How was the initial setup?

The deployment is easy. It took a few hours to get up and running. Two people were involved in the deployment. 

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

It's expensive. The price is high but the product is good. 

What other advice do I have?

It's on the cloud so it doesn't require maintenance. 

I would recommend Splunk SOAR. I would rate it a nine 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.
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PeerSpot user
Nagendra Nekkala. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager ICT & at Bangalore International Airport Limited
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Helps with visibility, offers helpful playbooks, and has good automation
Pros and Cons
  • "It helps increase efficiency and productivity."
  • "The number of playbooks on offer should be increased."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for security automation. It's used to investigate and remediate threats.

How has it helped my organization?

Normally, we would have to manually investigate events. However, with Splunk, everything is automatically investigated. 

What is most valuable?

The playbooks are great. They are very useful. We can define rules, including what the remediation should be. Everything gets clearly defined. You can set up different types of automation. It helps increase efficiency and productivity.

The solution provides us with end-to-end visibility.

It's easy to visualize and troubleshoot our cloud-native environment using Splunk. There's simple product management and quick detection and response that helps minimize risks. I can handle continuous monitoring from an operation control center. 

We can integrate with other systems. It's helped minimize incident tickets and my overall response time has been lowered. We began to realize benefits within three to four months of deployment. 

Splunk is very easy to use during an investigation. It's very straightforward. 

We've been able to reduce our security event volume by 50%. We've also been able to reduce our mean time to detect by about 25%. It's helped us save time and consolidate tools in our environment so that we can minimize staff appropriately. The automation makes all of this possible.

What needs improvement?

The number of playbooks on offer should be increased. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution has consistently been stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have about 300 people using the solution. It's scalable. We may increase usage in the future. We want to get the enterprise license. 

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been good. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We did not previously use a different solution. 

How was the initial setup?

It was easy to implement the solution. It took our team about four months to be trained on how to use the playbooks. 

We had two people managing the deployment process. One handled configuration, and the other handled integration. 

No maintenance is required for the product once implemented. 

What about the implementation team?

We handled the implementation in-house. 

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

I'm not aware of the exact pricing. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other options. 

What other advice do I have?

It's a valuable solution. It enables SIEM capabilities. We're able to orchestrate when events are happening, and this minimizes event tickets. We are able to handle security challenges while gaining good visibility.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

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.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Splunk SOAR Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: December 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Splunk SOAR Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.