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Splunk Security Essentials vs VMware Carbon Black Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 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

Splunk Security Essentials
Ranking in Security Incident Response
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (12th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (13th)
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint
Ranking in Security Incident Response
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (26th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (28th), Ransomware Protection (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Security Incident Response category, the mindshare of Splunk Security Essentials is 2.6%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is 8.2%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Incident Response Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint8.2%
Splunk Security Essentials2.6%
Other89.2%
Security Incident Response
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2836941 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Centralized monitoring has given our SOC real-time visibility into security and application activity
When I first implemented Splunk Security Essentials in this environment, it took a week for each log source to onboard and to create use cases and implement the data model, CIM, etc., for production readiness. Training is mandatory, and we need at least the Splunk Security Essentials User certification because it is a very critical resource in the organization, as we are handling security logs. In my organization, Splunk Security Essentials is used not only by the SOC but also for monitoring logs across different teams, as it is important for handling both security and application logs, given its capability to manage unstructured logs. Splunk Security Essentials has dramatically impacted my organization, as without it, we were blind to what is happening from both a security and application perspective, and it provides vital visibility into the organization's operations.
PM
CTO at Microsoft
Improved incident investigation has supported response while core protection still needs progress
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint does not have easy integration, as there are many complexities with the Ribitava API, which is very deep. I rate this solution overall as a five or six on a scale from one to ten. I have integrated VMware Carbon Black Endpoint with other tools that are helpful. I think this solution should be targeted at small clients, because adoption will grow more with small businesses tomorrow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are focusing on security to ensure incidents are reported efficiently. In addition to that, for reporting purposes, we are utilizing our dashboards or creating new ones. We will be using free visualization tools for this purpose."
"Splunk Security Essentials has impacted my organization in that we have been getting the results that we wanted."
"The network monitoring feature is particularly valuable for gathering information about users, login times, and other statistics."
"Splunk Security Essentials has dramatically impacted my organization, as without it, we were blind to what is happening from both a security and application perspective, and it provides vital visibility into the organization's operations."
"They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks."
"I would have to rate Splunk Security Essentials a 10 out of 10 because it's free and there's tons of usable content."
"The visibility provided has been great."
"One of the most valuable features is that it will block vulnerable sites. If there was a connection between one of our devices to a known malware site, it will block it."
"The Intel fit was very extensive and comprehensive enough."
"It has the best live response feature."
"The product allows us to focus on endpoint and antivirus protection."
"It actually does some heuristics, and some behavioral analysis."
"It is more expensive, but it's worth it."
"The data analysis is the most valuable because of the whitelist database. It is different than standard IDS solutions."
 

Cons

"The biggest friction points I have with Splunk Security Essentials are the high license costs and user behavior that causes performance issues due to inappropriate wildcard searches."
"The reporting feature needs to be more user-friendly."
"It takes a lot of time to install Splunk Security Essentials. It's not very difficult, but it requires time."
"The price could be improved."
"If I could change one thing about Splunk Security Essentials, it would be pricing. I believe they are still very costly as compared to the competition."
"They could add more AI content or AI and machine learning."
"It would be a better solution if Carbon Black Cb Defense had an on-promise solution and a virus auto delete or quarantine."
"I would personally give the tech support a rating of seven out of ten."
"Its compatibility can be improved. It did crash a server during deployment, which is not something that I want to happen. Its deployment should also be easier. The whole deployment cycle needs to be simplified. It is an enterprise solution, and to set it up right now, you have to be an expert."
"Right now, I get a lot of what I call noise email alerts. All I hear from them is, "Well, we're working on it. We're working on it." Well, they've been working on it for four years now, and nothing has changed."
"It would be nice to have additional forensic tools that you can build into the back end."
"The endpoint machines need improvement."
"I'm actually looking for a replacement because of the fact that we lost that integration."
"As far as I know, Carbon Defense has nothing that can be installed on mobile devices. It lacks a defense solution for mobile devices, especially mobile tablets. I would like to see support for mobile devices and the pricing should be less than the pricing for a normal workstation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"In terms of licensing costs, Carbon Black CB Defense was all associated with CROW and the services my company is using with them, so it came all-inclusive."
"The pricing is very high."
"Overall, it was cost-effective too."
"The pricing is annually based and operates through another department than mine."
"Carbon Black might be a touch more expensive than Symantec. They tend to get a premium for their capabilities. They're sort of an industry leader in a lot of areas with the functionality that they provide."
"The product is quite reasonable."
"The price for the solution is completely at government level, meaning one which is very high."
"Its pricing was very good, which is one of the reasons I went to it as an alternative. It is on a yearly basis. There are no additional fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Security Essentials?
Our SecOps manager and CISO were more familiar with Splunk, and the price was right. That was probably the primary driver, and we did evaluation as well with strict criteria and Gartner ratings.
What needs improvement with Splunk Security Essentials?
The biggest friction points I have with Splunk Security Essentials are the high license costs and user behavior that causes performance issues due to inappropriate wildcard searches. Additionally, ...
What is your primary use case for Splunk Security Essentials?
My main use case for Splunk Security Essentials is for Enterprise Security, specifically the ES app. Splunk Security Essentials is my primary tool for threat detection and monitoring because as a S...
What to choose: an endpoint antivirus, an EDR solution or both?
I can recommend Carbon Black, an award-winning next-gen anti-virus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) security solution. The CB Predictive Security Cloud platform combines multiple hi...
What's the difference between Carbon Black CB Response and Carbon Black CB Defense?
Carbon Black offers two different levels of Endpoint Detection and Response. One is the VM Carbon Black Cloud Endpoint Standard (CB Defense), and the other is the Carbon Black Endpoint Detection an...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Carbon Black CB Defense?
My rating for the pricing of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is that it is not cheap, but it is also not as inexpensive as I would prefer.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Carbon Black CB Defense, Bit9, Confer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Netflix, Progress Residential, Indeed, Hologic, Gentle Giant, Samsung Research America
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk Security Essentials vs. VMware Carbon Black Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.