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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
35th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
31st
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
7.4
Number of Reviews
327
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 11.8% 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 software is scalable to whatever is required, and you can also put a lot of resources in the cloud."
"Incident management is its most valuable feature."
"Their technical support responds quickly and are knowledgable."
"The development of use cases on the SSA console is quite user friendly. This means that the security analyst or the researcher does not have to learn another language."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to write rules and triggers for network communication, and then being able to investigate based on that."
"It's quite economical compared to other solutions in the market."
"The most valuable features are the integration and ease of use."
"The solution is really scalable for the high-end power, enterprise customer."
"With good domain knowledge, one can build almost anything. If you throw in Alert Manager or an integration with ServiceNow. Then, you have your own SIEM"
"The user interface is excellent, and since I'm using Splunk as a power user, it's easy to create dashboards."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a standard solution providing good customer service and partnership."
"It helps us uncover bottlenecks in the network."
"There are a lot of third-party applications that can be installed."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a very useful application to collect all the logs and also to find out the problems. You can easily create whatever you want by using its features, and it also has the capability to collect from all kinds of different platforms. Splunk Enterprise Security provides me with all the alerts."
"We saw the granularity that we could get from Splunk far exceeded what we already had. We had the ability to have our security team really focus on the platform and stay within the platform, but they could correlate with a variety of other stakeholders, and our stakeholders were growing."
"Splunk can extract all kinds of data. There's no limitation on what kind of structured and unstructured data one needs to extract — it can access any kind of data, including machine-generated data."
 

Cons

"More customizability is required, which is something that they need to improve on."
"Lots of competing products have vulnerability protection built into their products, and this solution would be improved by including that support."
"The system looks like it is a mix of a bunch of different systems, and nothing looked like it was quite together."
"It should have a monitoring feature. It would help us analyze the current state of attacks faster from a single platform."
"We have encountered issues with unresolved crashes."
"If we have the ability to run a dynamic analysis through malware in the same suite, it would be great to have a sandbox solution to analyze malware through dynamic analysis."
"Nowadays, their support is a little subpar compared to other solutions. I rate RSA support six out of 10."
"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."
"Splunk Enterprise Security would benefit from a more robust rule engine to reduce false positives."
"Splunk can be an expensive solution. Technical support could be improved as well."
"The integration feature with other applications, such as anti-DDoS application Arbor, needs to be more powerful."
"There are limitations with Splunk not detecting all user activity, especially on mainframes and network devices."
"Splunk Enterprise Security offers a vast amount of information to learn and comprehend, resulting in a challenging initial learning curve."
"The UI can be improved. Dashboards and reports can be better in terms of graphics."
"Some of the terminology can be confusing, even for seasoned vets. Renaming components at this point would be a serious undertaking. However, it might be beneficial in the long run."
"When we do a rollout from the server or host or anything, we'd like to see more automation. It would save us time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
"The product price was reasonable for my region and the market."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets do not have a subscription model, it's a one-time purchase. There is only a perpetual license."
"The pricing model is based on the number of gigabytes that you ingest into the Splunk system. So it can be an expensive solution."
"Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
"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."
"The pricing is a little bit on the higher side, but looking at what Splunk provides us, it is reasonable."
"It is a bit costly."
"I've heard Splunk is often preferred over other options, but the cost can be prohibitive for smaller organizations."
"I work on the technical side, so I don't know precise figures. However, I know that Splunk is a premium product, so it's somewhat costly. Still, you get a lot of unique features for the money."
"I think that most of the log analytics solutions are expensive and I'm not sure if it's worth it."
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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
13%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
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 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: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.