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Cisco XDR vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 30, 2024

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

Cisco XDR
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (26th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
308
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco XDR is designed for Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and holds a mindshare of 1.7%, up 0.1% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 9.5% mindshare, down 12.6% since last year.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Aruna Udawatte - PeerSpot reviewer
Network visibility improves with centralized maintenance and responsive support
The single point of maintenance and dashboards are the strong points of Cisco XDR ( /categories/extended-detection-and-response-xdr ). The visibility of the network is the main valuable feature. Customers frequently request features that offer better system visibility. The solution also offers automated response capability, which I would rate around eight out of ten.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"Technical support from Cisco is good and very helpful."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"We primarily use it to correlate logs throughout the enterprise for both searching and use in investigations."
"If I need to integrate devices for logs, it is easier with Splunk. We can integrate different applications, network devices, and databases. It is also very rich in documents. It is the best."
"Splunk Enterprise Security offers two valuable features: the Common Information Model and arrangement modules."
"It has virtual visualization, and other products do not."
"It helped us consolidate all our solutions into an easy tool to use for various employees."
"The security part is useful as it helps secure the entire environment."
"The solution allows easy gathering and ingestion of the data."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the criticality of alerts."
 

Cons

"When we first started with Cisco XDR in August, everybody was having issues. There were three people in our organization, including me, who couldn't even log in to Cisco XDR."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"One area that needs improvement is the limited visibility due to the licensing structure. For more visibility, customers need the advantage or premier licensing, which involves additional costs."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"If we have a list of domains we need to block, such as 4,000 domains, I can only block 100 domains at a time because if I put in more than 100 domains, I hit that 2,000 character max and can't continue with an investigation. Being able to put in all 4,000 domains, without a character limit or observable limit, would make doing those case books a whole lot easier and blocking those domains a whole lot easier too."
"We've sometimes faced issues with upgrades. The incident review dashboard sometimes breaks after updates. When we add a space or something in the description or anywhere in the SQL, the drill-down value may be reset with a blank value. Before rolling out any software, they should test it thoroughly and ensure clients won't have issues with the upgraded version. It should be compatible with all or most of the apps. All major issues must be addressed before rolling out the upgrade."
"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."
"We'd like Splunk to reduce false positives."
"The GUI can be improved. Splunk has always suffered from having a kind of goofy UI, it needs some updating."
"The support and the pricing can be better"
"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."
"We had an instance when Splunk failed and it took us a couple of days to recover."
"The threat detection library needs to increase the frequency at which the playbooks are updated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing modules could be improved."
"ROI is estimated at saving my team roughly 10 to 12 man hours per week in troubleshooting for our company as well as what our profits had been from our services of installing, configuring, and supporting other clients with the product."
"I think that most of the log analytics solutions are expensive and I'm not sure if it's worth it."
"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is high."
"It's more expensive than the other tools, but it's worth it. Every penny is worth it."
"Pricing is probably its weakest spot. As compared to some competitors, Splunk is really expensive."
"My customers have found the price of the solution to be high."
"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."
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Comparison Review

VS
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
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco XDR?
Costs vary depending on dollar fluctuations. Cisco requires conversion to dollars, which affects the cost compared to local competitors who bill in local currency. Overall, the price is a bit expen...
What needs improvement with Cisco XDR?
An issue that we have with Cisco XDR is the observable list. These observables are basically similar to a chess board where you have a certain number of spots to put pieces. It's the same concept w...
What is your primary use case for Cisco XDR?
I use Cisco XDR because I'm a SOC analyst. It's something I use every single day. The majority of my work has been in Cisco XDR looking through incidents, reading reports that it gives, and making ...
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...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Wazuh and others in Extended Detection and Response (XDR). Updated: May 2025.
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