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NetWitness Platform vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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
37th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
29th
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
7.6
Number of Reviews
315
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.4%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
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 product has a user-friendly interface and a valuable feature for threat intelligence integration."
"Alerting Module: It provides real-time event processing language on all the logs/packets stream for advanced alerting, i.e., using SQL LIKE statements."
"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."
"Performance and reporting are very good."
"What we are mainly using are the RSA concentrator, RSA Decoder, Archiver, Broker, and Log Decoder."
"The most valuable feature is the hunting ability to work in a CERT."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to write rules and triggers for network communication, and then being able to investigate based on that."
"The most valuable feature is the correlation. It can report in real-time and monitor the management."
"The search engine and indexes are fast and optimized, and the report generation dashboard is user-friendly."
"It has a drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to know SQL or Java to construct a query on Splunk. The resolution time is about the same, but it took longer to discover the issue with ArcSight. Our previous solution took about an hour or more, but Splunk can do it within a few minutes or an hour at most."
"The connections to the database are very good and updating the data files is simple to do. The dashboards are useful and user-friendly."
"It definitely does help with both auditing and as well as regular monitoring. SOC does more monitoring, but ES also gives you other features that are auditing-related. The dashboards are also beneficial."
"We have a one stop dashboard for health of some of our services where you can click in and it takes you to other dashboards that have custom near real-time metrics that show the application's health."
"It has a big user base, so the community is useful."
"Visualizations helped the organisation with a better understanding of its KPIs."
"The stability of Splunk Enterprise Security is very impressive; it is a very stable product."
 

Cons

"More customizability is required, which is something that they need to improve on."
"They should implement algorithms to digest that data and produce additional, more advanced reporting, alerting and support of internal security teams."
"The initial setup is complex. There are other solutions that are easier to implement."
"The multi-tenant capabilities are lagging compared to IBM QRadar."
"We have encountered issues with unresolved crashes."
"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."
"Sometimes, it gives me static when integrating Windows-based systems. It should produce a precise log of sorts as to where the problem is. For example, a few days ago because of the McAfee application firewall, I couldn't get access to the particular Windows machine. So, my team and I had to figure out by ourselves that there was a virus responsible for the obstacle. This solution should trigger a meaningful log or message indicating the reason the user or implementer can't get into the machine."
"The tool's integration capability isn't so great."
"Splunk does not build apps. They only go back and validate the apps that somebody has already built. They should have remote consulting support. They have a wonderful solution. They have 24/7 security. Nobody needs to depend on any third party and will therefore just buy Splunk on the cloud."
"The use cases provided by Splunk are a good starting point, but could cover many additional topics to ensure that a smaller or less experienced shop might maximize the value of an ES deployment."
"They can improve their support teams. They can also improve their capability of ingesting data from different IoT sources."
"Previously, they developed custom connectors or add-ons for a lot of applications. But that number can be upgraded still. There are a lot of applications in the world that are not supported."
"Some of the search functions can be better. There has been a lot of talk at the conference about the update of SPL before each iteration. That will be a lot of help."
"Splunk can improve regex/asset analysis as we do not want to crawl until it is done."
"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."
"While Splunkbase (the app repository) has a lot of great content, some apps are terribly old and could stand to be updated or purged."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a licensing fee and the customer can choose whether he wishes this to be subscription-based or perpetual."
"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"Our license is for one year."
"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."
"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"Compared to the competition, the is price is not that high."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is high."
"The pricing can be better. We are already considering Elastic because Splunk is too expensive. You have to pay based on per-day ingestion. There should be a more flexible model for the use cases where one day you have a huge amount, and on other days, it is quite less."
"The tool's pricing model is great. You can choose between workloads or volume."
"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 has always been on the expensive side."
"I think the price could be improved."
"The price is comparable."
"The pricing could be made more competitive."
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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
17%
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
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 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: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.