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IBM Watson for Cyber Security 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Watson for Cyber Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
58th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 IBM Watson for Cyber Security is 0.3%, up from 0.2% 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

Elena Stefanovska - PeerSpot reviewer
Knowledgeable support, reliable, and useful compliance policies
IBM Watson for Cyber Security can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud and it is used as a SIEM solution The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add…
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

"The customer support is very good."
"The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add them in the next release."
"The most valuable feature of this product is innovation, where the research and upgrading of technology never ends."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very stable."
"The solution's most valuable features are the granularity and analysis of the logs."
"We evaluated several solutions and selected Splunk due to the functionality and cost."
"We have found all the features useful. However, the dashboarding and logging have been very helpful. Additionally, the log analysis does a great job."
"From the class that I took this week, being able to create notable events from whatever you find in the data set is pretty useful."
"It provides a risk score for each object, device, or user. We can then take action if they are at a higher risk."
"The features of Splunk Enterprise Security that I have found most valuable include the risk-based score and UBA/UEBA, user behavior analytics, or user and entity behavior analytics."
"It has quite extensive support in terms of integration. If you want to do anything, there are tools for that."
"Good for log collection and log management."
 

Cons

"They need to continue to build the AI capabilities."
"The dashboard could improve in IBM Watson for Cyber Security."
"This is an expensive product, so making it more cost-effective would be an improvement."
"In the future, I would like to see threat intelligence included."
"Splunk can improve regex/asset analysis as we do not want to crawl until it is done."
"For us, the area that Splunk Enterprise Security can improve is performance optimization."
"The algorithms customization of Splunk could improve. They have limited algorithms for machine learning support. If they can allow the user to add more machine learning algorithms, such as the ability to choose the algorithm that a user might want. Additionally, they should provide the required libraries for those algorithms, and then analyzes the data for use."
"The difficult part is related to integration with sources of data that are used to create the logs as this depends on the infrastructure of the client."
"The product could be cheaper."
"Its performance can be better. Sometimes, it takes longer when we do queries."
"The historical data extraction needs improvement. I would like the capability of taking data and having it trend longer."
"It needs a better way to export dynamic views without requiring a ton of code and user/pw."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution should be lower, although I understand why IBM charges a premium price."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very simple to license and is priced well."
"The pricing of Splunk Enterprise Security is somewhat high, but comparing it with its benefits, it's acceptable. It depends on the type of business."
"I am not personally involved with the pricing of the solution."
"The Splunk Enterprise Security license is expensive."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is based on data volume, which generally suits large enterprises."
"Some of the insights that we have obtained as a part of using Splunk have greatly helped us in increasing our revenue in terms of selling our products."
"Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
"The pricing depends on the bandwidth of an organization and is good compared to some SIEM tools. IBM, for example, is quite costly. But Microsoft Sentinel is notably cheaper."
"We had a yearly subscription."
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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
No data available
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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 IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.