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Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Change Auditor for Windows ...
Ranking in Log Management
36th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
381
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Change Auditor for Windows File Servers is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 6.8%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security6.8%
Change Auditor for Windows File Servers0.5%
Other92.7%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

KF
Senior Operations Manager at Procter & Gamble
Provides granular queries of security logs and real-time alerting helps me mitigate risks
The real-time alerting helps me mitigate risks. For example, someone adds a member to the domain admin group. We have an alert set up, so if someone does this unexpectedly, we get notified. Then, we can check and verify if the action is legitimate or a potential threat to the environment.
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Bank of America
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In terms of features, the querying is great."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it can be fully integrated with Microsoft solutions and it doesn't impact the productivity order."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it can be fully integrated with Microsoft solutions and it doesn't impact the productivity order."
"It helped us consolidate all our solutions into an easy tool to use for various employees."
"With Splunk, we got more insights out of our data as it includes machine and secure data."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Splunk Enterprise Security is the CIM data model, which allows users to bring in data from different technologies, such as firewalls, endpoints, and perimeter DMZs, enabling every device to pump data into Splunk Enterprise Security, with the data model normalizing all the data and placing it in a common plane."
"The most valuable feature is the DSS, also known as SPL, because it allows users to script advanced queries with limited knowledge."
"It actually helps us by not having to develop all the use cases ourselves, providing an integrated product that has everything in one place."
"One of the most valuable features is threat hunting. We can do threat hunting and identify if there is any malicious activity happening within our environment, which is a key feature for us."
"It helps us to detect viruses and security events from our network."
"It's similar to having a car. It's a necessity. I don't have to prove to the business executives that it provides return on investment. It's a necessary function and a must-have."
 

Cons

"The pricing could be improved. It needs to be reduced."
"The pricing could be improved. It needs to be reduced."
"The customer service and support could improve their approach to questioning issues. They tend to ask questions one at a time, which creates a lot of back-and-forth communication."
"I feel as though a major focus of upcoming releases should be set on Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics, and I would enjoy to see more security focused add-ons and apps developed by the vendor."
"When you get into large amounts of data, Splunk can get pretty slow. This is the same on-premise or AWS, it doesn't matter. The way that they handle large data sets could be improved."
"Better education for users would be beneficial as they often don't know what they don't know or how to look for certain features."
"It currently has limited default rules and customizations. If they can concentrate more on the compliance part and the security information part, it would be helpful."
"Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power. When we execute heavy, resource-intensive queries over long periods, the performance dips."
"Stability is there, but every release has some bugs."
"The price has room for improvement."
"It's difficult to set up initially, and their billing model is also a bit complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is per user. The cost is approximately $15/user on a yearly basis. If you need to, you can always upgrade as well."
"Splunk is really expensive."
"My experience with the solution's setup cost, pricing, and licensing was really good."
"The pricing model is expensive and a nightmare based on the amount of data."
"It is economical than other solutions."
"We have seen ROI and improvements as we have continued to use the product, but they are more reactive."
"Splunk is definitely not a cheap solution. It is an expensive product."
"While some clients find the cost of Splunk Enterprise Security to be on the higher end, its pricing is comparable to other SIEM solutions."
"Our ROI is high."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business112
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise267
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?
They've already made improvements! They have a tool called IT Security Search, which lets you perform queries outside of Change Auditor. It's much faster. This is a really good addition and helps u...
What is your primary use case for Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?
I use Change Auditor for Windows File Servers to log history. It's helpful when we have critical changes in Active Directory, like adding or removing items. I use it extensively for monitoring.
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dragon Capital, Howard County MD
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.