Splunk Enterprise Security vs syslog-ng comparison

Splunk and One Identity are both solutions in the Log Management category. Splunk is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4, while One Identity is ranked #17 with an average rating of 10.0. Splunk holds a 7.3% mindshare in Log Management, compared to One Identity’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Splunk users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of One Identity users who would recommend it.

Splunk Enterprise Security

Read 315 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews

14,305 Views
4,161 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

syslog-ng

Read 7 syslog-ng reviews

4,298 Views
3,134 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Enterprise Security

syslog-ng

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Splunk Enterprise Security and syslog-ng are competing in the security information and event management (SIEM) category. Splunk Enterprise Security seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive analytics capabilities, while syslog-ng is recognized for its efficient log management strengths, catering to different customer priorities.

Features: Splunk Enterprise Security offers advanced threat detection, automated response, and comprehensive analytics that provide a deeper understanding of potential vulnerabilities. It supports integration with various infrastructure and applications, allowing users to correlate different data sources. On the other hand, syslog-ng excels with its log filtering, reliable data collection, and parsing capacities, being particularly useful for real-time monitoring and integration with multiple solutions.

Room for Improvement: Splunk Enterprise Security could enhance its user interface for better usability and streamline the onboarding process for new users. It might also improve its pricing models to be more accessible to smaller enterprises. syslog-ng, while excellent at handle-based logs, could improve by offering more built-in analytics capabilities, better integration with other security tools, and enhanced support for diverse data formats to increase its flexibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Enterprise Security provides flexible deployment options suitable for various enterprise scales and infrastructures, complemented by robust customer service. Syslog-ng emphasizes simplicity in deployment with its straightforward architecture, making it quick and easy to set up, which benefits organizations prioritizing rapid deployment over advanced service.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Enterprise Security demands a higher initial investment but offers considerable ROI through its extensive features, making it an attractive option for large enterprises with complex needs. Conversely, syslog-ng’s lower initial cost appeals to organizations with budget constraints looking for efficient log management. Both tools present distinct ROI advantages aligned with their key capabilities and feature offerings.

To learn more, read our detailed Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng

June 2025

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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

Splunk Enterprise Security

Ranking in Log Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

315

Ranking in other categories

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)

syslog-ng

Ranking in Log Management

17th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

2.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.3%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 2.5%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management

Featured Reviews

ROBERT-CHRISTIAN

CTO at kyndryl

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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RyanVargas

Senior Director and Senior Systems Engineer (Dual Role), IT Infrastructure and Security at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

It's a user-friendly open-source solution that can replace or augment a commercial product in some cases

I rate syslog-ng 10 out of 10. It's free and easy to use. It has built-in tools that help us index the various logs sent to it. It's a solid log product. If you're looking for a SIEM solution, syslog-ng will work as a stopgap measure at beginning of the project. It can also work as an injector for a true SIEM solution. You can send all the logs to syslog-ng and forward all the data to the SIEM solution after you've cleaned up the data and got the pertinent information. It's a good front end for a commercial SIEM solution, which becomes more expensive as you load more data into it. I would highly recommend syslog-ng for that use case. However, if you lack the expertise, you might need to go with a cloud-based SIEM instead. You need some in-house expertise or an outside consultant to manage it and set it up.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is really straightforward. It's one of the easiest installations."

"Splunk Enterprise Security is fast and well-documented, and user interface and user interaction are well-designed compared to other SIEM solutions."

"Splunk's schema on demand is incredibly useful. I do not have to worry about what my users will need when we onboard their data."

"The site is constantly up, and it's been really easy to adjust the data."

"It is quite extensible. It is a platform that we can build our use instead of each case instead of each case being limited or restricted to each capability. This is probably the best feature."

"The correlation searches are most valuable just because we are able to do things like RBA."

"Overall, Splunk is among the top three SIEM tools due to its capabilities and agility in bridging business analytics with security needs."

"On the cloud, we are pushing through less than half a petabyte of data. So far, it has been fairly stable because it runs on all the underlying AWS infrastructures."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."

"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

"For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior."

"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."

"Syslog-ng provides easy access to all my logs. It helps me show managers and other clients precisely where an incident occurred. I also like it because you can integrate syslog-ng with multiple solutions to allow real-time monitoring."

Cons

"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 threat management part is still lagging. There are some gaps in threat management. Other vendors have built-in threat management systems, but Splunk lacks the threat management component in its portal. The UEBA and everything else is perfect, but it lacks a unified threat intelligence and management part."

"The price has room for improvement."

"I would like to see the asset and identity lookups be more automatic and less manual."

"Considering the contract thing and the whole legal area, it takes forever to get the contracts signed and to be able to agree to the terms and conditions for my company as well as for Splunk's team."

"Splunk could add more ways to manage archiving and storage. There isn't a web interface. You can do this on the SaaS version, but the on-premise platform doesn't have this option. It has other things but no option for remote NAS. I would like to have a personal web interface where I can specify how long logs should be stored. To have this readily available on the web, you need to adjust some settings on the backend. That is tricky."

"The user interface is not user-friendly for non-technical users."

"The tool itself is very difficult to configure. It's great for its number of inputs, for the different types of systems devices, and things that it could collect information from. To actually make good use of it, you need a fairly dedicated team of people that have some reasonably good programming or modeling skills to be able to do the things that you need to do with it. Whereas a lot of the other tools are better packaged for that, and so require a lot less training and a lot less dedication."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

"The filtering has room for improvement."

"It's hard to find people who know how to use syslog-ng. I often find problems with configurations, and solutions aren't integrated correctly with syslog-ng. For example, there might be data with extra decimals, or the collector agents are incorrectly named. It isn't a problem with the solution; it's a lack of professionals."

"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."

"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am fine with the licensing, but in terms of the cost, it is expensive for the data that we have. We have an open discussion with our account rep about this."

"Pricing can be a limiting factor. You have to continuously tune what you are bringing in and make sure what you bring in is of value."

"Its pricing model can be improved."

"Although Splunk is an expensive product, it is designed to be utilized across your organization in order to maximize your ROI and lower your TCO."

"The Splunk Enterprise Security license is expensive."

"It's more expensive than the other tools, but it's worth it. Every penny is worth it."

"Splunk can be an expensive solution. It all depends on how we configure the alerts and the events from the endpoints. You can save some money if you do that correctly. If not, it becomes an expensive solution."

"While Splunk offers generous developer licenses and obtaining annual licenses is straightforward, the cost is a major consideration."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice

"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."

"Syslog-ng is open-source."

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at Deloitte & Touche

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about syslog-ng?

For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for syslog-ng?

The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with one being expensive and ten being cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with syslog-ng?

There is room for improvement in terms of observability. Additionally, a possible new feature could be Kafka integration.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 8% of the time

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 8% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 6% of the time

Security Onion vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors

Graylog vs syslog-ng

Compared 30% of the time

SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server vs syslog-ng

Compared 24% of the time

Grafana Loki vs syslog-ng

Compared 11% of the time

Elastic Stack vs syslog-ng

Compared 5% of the time

Cribl vs syslog-ng

Compared 5% of the time

More syslog-ng Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security

June 2025

Download Splunk Enterprise Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Log Management

May 2025

Download syslog-ng product report

Overview

Splunk Enterprise Security is widely used for security operations, including threat detection, incident response, and log monitoring. It centralizes log management, offers security analytics, and ensures compliance, enhancing the overall security posture of organizations.

Companies leverage Splunk Enterprise Security to monitor endpoints, networks, and users, detecting anomalies, brute force attacks, and unauthorized access. They use it for fraud detection, machine learning, and real-time alerts within their SOCs. The platform enhances visibility and correlates data from multiple sources to identify security threats efficiently. Key features include comprehensive dashboards, excellent reporting capabilities, robust log aggregation, and flexible data ingestion. Users appreciate its SIEM capabilities, threat intelligence, risk-based alerting, and correlation searches. Highly scalable and stable, it suits multi-cloud environments, reducing alert volumes and speeding up investigations.

What are the key features?

Comprehensive Dashboards: Provide a holistic view of security operations.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports various data sources for better analysis.
Robust Log Aggregation: Centralizes log management for easier monitoring.
Machine Learning Toolkit: Enhances threat detection and prediction capabilities.
SIEM Capabilities: Integrates security information and event management.
Threat Intelligence: Utilizes external information to improve security measures.
Risk-Based Alerting: Prioritizes alerts based on the risk they pose.
Correlation Searches: Identifies and correlates security events effectively.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced Visibility: Improves monitoring across endpoints, networks, and users.
Faster Incident Response: Speeds up identification and resolution of security issues.
Reduced Alert Volumes: Lowers false positives and enhances signal-to-noise ratio.
Scalability: Adapts to growing and changing security needs.
Improved Security Operations: Integrates multiple security facets into one platform.

Splunk Enterprise Security is implemented across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail. Financial institutions use it for fraud detection and compliance, while healthcare organizations leverage its capabilities to safeguard patient data. Retailers deploy it to protect customer information and ensure secure transactions.

Splunk

Optimizing SIEM
syslog-ng is the log management solution that improves the performance of your SIEM solution by reducing the amount and improving the quality of data feeding your SIEM.

Rapid search and troubleshooting
With syslog-ng Store Box, you can find the answer. Search billions of logs in seconds using full text queries with Boolean operators to pinpoint critical logs.

Meeting compliance requirements
syslog-ng Store Box provides secure, tamper-proof storage and custom reporting to demonstrate compliance.

Big data ingestion
syslog-ng can deliver data from a wide variety of sources to Hadoop, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, and Kafka as well as many others.

Universal log collection and routing
syslog-ng flexibly routes log data from X sources to Y destinations. Instead of deploying multiple agents on hosts, organizations can unify their log data collection and management.

Secure data archive
syslog-ng Store Box provides automated archiving, tamper-proof encrypted storage, granular access controls to protect log data. The largest appliance can store up to 10TB of raw logs.

One Identity

Sample Customers

Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.

Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng

June 2025

Free Report: Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng

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