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Cortex XSIAM vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.7
Organizations using Cortex XSIAM saw significant ROI and improved incident management through automation, though results vary short-term.
Sentiment score
6.5
Splunk Enterprise Security enhances visibility, improves error resolution, automates processes, and integrates well, though ROI assessment can be challenging.
The documentation for Splunk Enterprise Security is outstanding. It is well-organized and easy to access.
I have noticed a return on investment with Splunk Enterprise Security, as it delivers substantial value for money.
Customers see the value in investing in this solution, particularly when it helps resolve issues quickly, turning a potential 20-hour response into one hour.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Customer service differs for Cortex XSIAM: Premium support is favored; other tiers vary in efficiency and responsiveness.
Sentiment score
6.4
Splunk Enterprise Security support is knowledgeable but occasionally slow, with mixed efficiency reviews and valuable community resources.
With premium support, core Palo Alto technical experts handle issues directly.
It is ineffective in terms of responding to basic queries and addressing future requirements.
The Palo Alto support team is fully responsive and helpful.
We have paid for Splunk support, and we’re not on the free tier hoping for assistance; we are a significant customer and invest a lot in this service.
If you want to write your own correlation rules, it is very difficult to do, and you need Splunk's support to write new correlation rules for the SIEM tool.
They try to close issues as soon as possible, often just offering documentation links.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Cortex XSIAM is praised for scalability and flexibility, though some desire improved on-premises options and integration capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.5
Splunk Enterprise Security offers scalable, flexible solutions handling large data volumes effortlessly, though cost concerns persist, especially on-premise.
Without proper integration, scaling up with more servers is meaningless.
Cortex XSIAM is highly scalable.
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
It is easy to scale.
It's big in a Central European context, and small from a Splunk North American context.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cortex XSIAM is highly stable, despite occasional issues, praised for reliability, installation ease, and performance across environments.
Sentiment score
7.6
Splunk Enterprise Security is stable and resilient, though resource-heavy queries can cause occasional bugs, needing optimized use cases.
The product was easy to install and set up and worked right.
Overall, Cortex XSIAM is stable.
They test it very thoroughly before release, and our customers have Splunk running for months without issues.
It provides a stable environment but needs to integrate with ITSM platforms to achieve better visibility.
I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSIAM needs better integration, user interface, and performance, with improvements in vulnerability detection, support, and licensing options.
Splunk Enterprise Security users desire improved GUI, integration, pricing, training, data handling, and advanced features for better efficiency.
Obtaining validation for integrations from Palo Alto takes around eight months, which is quite long.
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports.
Cortex could improve the detection and online resolution of security vulnerabilities.
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
Splunk Enterprise Security is not something that automatically picks things; you have to set up use cases, update data models, and link the right use cases to the right data models for those detections to happen.
For any future enhancements or features, such as MLTK and SOAR platform integration, we need more visibility, training, and certification for the skilled professionals who are working.
 

Setup Cost

Cortex XSIAM's competitive pricing faces mixed reviews, with additional costs for add-ons and integration despite perceived value.
Splunk Enterprise Security is costly but valued for features and scalability, with pricing concerns for smaller businesses.
The first impression is that XSIAM would be more expensive than others we tried.
The product is very expensive.
Cortex XSIAM is pretty expensive, and the licensing process is not very comfortable.
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
I find it to be affordable, which is why every industry uses it.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSIAM offers advanced SOAR capabilities, enhancing security with machine learning, automation, and efficient threat detection without extensive logs.
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in log management, data ingestion, and integration, enhancing security operations with user-friendly features.
One of the valued aspects of the product is its use of artificial intelligence to detect security vulnerabilities.
The flexibility for creating manual workflows stands out.
Its signature-less subscriptions and robust detection power stand out in improving threat detection.
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
I assess Splunk Enterprise Security's insider threat detection capabilities for helping to find unknown threats and anomalous user behavior as great.
Splunk Enterprise Security provides the foundation for unified threat detection, investigation, and response, enabling fast identification of critical issues.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XSIAM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (7th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
327
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cortex XSIAM is 2.9%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.4%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

AKASH MAJUMDER - PeerSpot reviewer
Incident response times have significantly reduced with efficient device integration and log parsing capabilities
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports. Additionally, a future update request is to enable tagging of endpoints in groups, similar to a feature available in Cortex XDR. The AI analytics need fine-tuning because some use cases are not working from my side.
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.
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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
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cortex XSIAM?
It is an effective solution in terms of performance and functionalities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex XSIAM?
The licensing cost of Cortex XSIAM is more or less the same as Splunk, making it quite expensive compared to other tools. There are additional expenses for more functionalities.
What needs improvement with Cortex XSIAM?
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports. Additionally, a future update request is to enable tagging of endpoints in groups, simila...
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

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 Cortex XSIAM vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
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