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NetWitness Platform 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

NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
33rd
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
30th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
369
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.2%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security9.2%
NetWitness Platform0.6%
Other90.2%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.
Kyle Vernham - PeerSpot reviewer
Built-in searches and unified data access streamline alert investigation and boosts analyst efficiency
The two features I appreciate the most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the built-in searches, which have been very easy for us to get started with right out of the box, and the fact that it accesses all of our other systems. You can access it as a pane of glass rather than having to search individually. We also have the option to compare our analysts from our service to service. Splunk Enterprise Security helps our SOC team prioritize and investigate high-fidelity alerts more effectively by providing a more in-depth look and the ability to access a lot more of our data. Instead of jumping from several segmented systems, it allows us to have everything brought together in one place. For example, you have to move from our purview to our build system and to Splunk Enterprise Security, and it enables us to streamline that process. The built-in features of Splunk Enterprise Security, which we recently procured, have given us a good starting point and demonstrated the value of the product, providing an easy way to sell it to our company. The ease of getting everything into our purview helps us, and it serves as a good start for the investigation part in one location rather than what we usually have, which is jumping from system to system to system. Splunk Enterprise Security plays a role in our company's strategy to combat insider threats and advanced persistent threats by currently being in its technical test phase. We are still rolling it out, and it should help us find any insider threats based on information that our policy states should not be present in our system. Splunk Enterprise Security's risk-based alerting (RBA) has impacted our alert volume and analyst productivity because we've got many different systems feeding into it. However, it has helped to make it easier for our analysts to go through a set of events rather than 100 alerts. RBA allows us to streamline the process and customize it for our analysts. When it comes to leveraging Splunk Enterprise Security's dashboards and visualizations to communicate security posture to executives, it's pretty straightforward for any type of information. The visualization is easy to understand, but I haven't had any direct conversations with our executives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Possibility to investigate incidents based on logs and raw packets, such as extracting files sent over the network"
"The most valuable feature is that we can create our own connectors for any application, and NetWitness provides the training and tools to do it."
"Incident management is its most valuable feature."
"I can have enterprise security, email security, next generation firewall security log, HIDS and NIDS logs, etc. all on the same dashboard. It makes it easy to pinpoint or correlate our server to this. I can find out if there is lateral movement. This is the biggest advantage of this solution."
"NetWitness can be highly beneficial for incident detection and response."
"The most valuable features are its ingestion of logs and raising of alerts based on those logs."
"Performance and reporting are very good."
"The most valuable features are the packet decoder, log decoder, and concentrator."
"One key advantage of Splunk over competitors like IBM QRadar is its superior device integration capabilities."
"Splunk Enterprise Security offers two valuable features: the Common Information Model and arrangement modules."
"In the past we used the different application to collect logs. We used SurfWatch and VMware to do so. But, we found that the Splunk has more capacity to do more in less time. They provide a aster speed to index all the events , and this is a huge asset."
"Splunk is a user-friendly solution."
"Easy to deploy and simple to use."
"The community marketplace is useful; often, you do not need to rely on Splunk Enterprise Security support due to the wealth of online documentation available—Splunk docs are truly beneficial."
"If properly built, I'm very impressed with the stability of Splunk ES."
"It gives me notifications of notable events."
 

Cons

"The documentation is not as structured as I would like, personally, and I think that it can be improved and made much more user-friendly."
"We have encountered issues with unresolved crashes."
"The initial setup is very complex and should be simplified."
"The system looks like it is a mix of a bunch of different systems, and nothing looked like it was quite together."
"There are instances where you try to run the reports and then it does not give you the desired outcome."
"Technical support could be improved."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets can improve the threat level aspect, it is lacking compared to other solutions. Whenever any hacking activity or any other threat factor occurred they used to provide the coverages very fast when comparing RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets. I heard the other three solutions, from a discussion with my team members who had experience in other solutions, they used to say that. Whenever any issues happened across the globe RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets are a little bit slow improving those detection mechanisms."
"There is no support for this product in this country, so problems have to be resolved through global technical teams."
"AngularJS/ReactJS inclusion could be made easier in GUI."
"Its user interface for everything other than the charts can be improved. Some parts of it can be simplified a bit, such as when importing documents that have the network traffic. When you're going through the information about the network traffic, you have to have the expertise, but even if a program is supposed to be for IT support, it is good to make it user-friendly because it gets easier to train people. When something goes wrong, the more difficult a program is in terms of UI, the harder it is to fix the issue."
"The UI could be better. This is applicable to Splunk in general. I know that a lot of people who get their hands on Splunk are hesitant to use it just because they find it overwhelming. There are a lot of options."
"The on-premise integration with SOAR could be more simple; the cloud version integrates with SOAR very easily, but the on-premise SOAR and on-premise Splunk Enterprise Security are really not that easy, so I would appreciate if that could be improved."
"The GUI can be improved to include some of the capabilities that other BI solutions have."
"It'd be really nice if Splunk Enterprise Security had a better and solid configuration guide."
"I find the process for customizing, developing, testing, deploying, and refining detections in Splunk Enterprise Security to be challenging at times."
"The incident response technique should be available out of the box. That isn't as available as we would expect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"There is a licensing fee and the customer can choose whether he wishes this to be subscription-based or perpetual."
"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets do not have a subscription model, it's a one-time purchase. There is only a perpetual license."
"It is cheap."
"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
"Splunk is not free."
"Splunk is a bit pricier, but the benefits and ROI are huge."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is pretty competitive."
"It is expensive, but it is a good tool. It is worth the cost."
"I remember Splunk being relatively affordable. Kibana was more reasonable, but you get more with Splunk. If I was suggesting something, I would probably suggest Splunk because it is better to pay a little bit more and get a lot more."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive."
"Most people share the same thought that the ingestion rates can get pretty pricey. There is a lot of work we do to curate the data that we send to Splunk so that it is not too noisy or too expensive."
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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
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise257
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
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...
 

Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
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 NetWitness Platform vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.