Splunk Enterprise Security Reviews

I have some experience with the solution, since I am working with customers who are interested in part time help monitoring their network and have been helping them fine-tune the rules in the solution's platform. The way the primary task works is to watch for and then respond to the threat. Should there be a need, I usually work with a team in fine-tuning the rules on this platform. We are providing the products.

I recently started working primarily on the Playbooks of the Splunk Phantom, so I've been creating some of these to help the customer automate the process of responding to the threats.

What is nice about the solution is that it makes it easy to build the queries, search for the events and then do analysis. I recently have become involved in the Playbooks, since it is painful for the client to respond to the threat, be it positive or negative. As such, I currently see the Phantom component of the solution to be of great value. Otherwise, most other features seem to be similar to Netwitness, such as the monitor log, network, and endpoint capabilities. Importantly, the solution lacks endpoint options, as these are currently deployed on Cisco, which is okay, as it works fine with that bad side of the endpoint security. This translates into them building queries, rules and then Playbooks. 

The main advantage of the solution is that it provides an easy setup platform in the new environment. When set up afresh, it is also easy to build queries. Historical queries can be used to site for a new event, which makes it easy to use, deploy and understand.

Endpoint access is the only issue I can think to mention, even though the endpoint access we have with Cisco is fine. 

I have been engaged in the production environment of Splunk for around a year and have been reading up on it for a long time.

I would rate Splunk as one of the big five platforms. I would give it a high rating based on the efficiency of the platform. 

Splunk allows one to easily scale up this platform. One can add more interfaces to that platform if he gets more data. 

I usually rely on the Splunk community for information, such as discussions of incidents and other issues which others are facing. I feel the Splunk community to be an excellent source of information for me.

Out of the three platforms I have been dealing with, I feel the initial setup of Splunk to be the easiest. I found it a bit difficult to set up a new environment with RSA Netwitness. Splunk, on the other hand, I have found to be very straightforward and an uncomplex platform. 

I have been proposing to management to take the solution to be a primary product in our dealings with it. We do not encounter many issues involving the solution. One of the problems I have with the RSA Netwitness platform is its complexity. Splunk is straightforward for us when it comes to views and it provides us the network security posture.

The ability for the solution to work with Cisco shows that the solution can work with other products. The only thing is that when the solution is compared with other vendors, one sees that there is only a single other vendor that has endpoint security like this one, Netwitness platform having its component for the endpoint. This is why an integrated endpoint would be a nice feature, even though the solution works on Cisco. 

The main advantage of the solution is that it provides an easy setup platform in the new environment. When set up afresh, it is also easy to build queries. Historical queries can be used to site for a new event, which makes it easy to use, deploy and understand. 

When it comes to a data platform, there is RSA NetWitness, which may also be a good platform. I have not done much training of my own on Splunk, but have gained much experience through learning and working with clients that I support. This is because the platform is understandable. 

I would rate Splunk as one of the big five platforms. I would give it a high rating based on the efficiency of the platform. Clearly, I cannot include Wazuh in the top five categories, as its rating is not up there with Splunk, Qradar and LogRythm.

I cannot think of anything disadvantageous about Splunk, as we are talking about a product that I like. I feel the solution has beautiful features. 

The decision to go with Splunk would depend on the business needs of the individual. I know that Splunk has both a cloud and an on-premises option. Sometimes, such as when it comes to conferences, there is no need to move some of the data to the cloud for the purpose of complying with regional requirements. There may be a need to retain some of it and a person might wish for a mixture of on-cloud and on-premises capabilities.

I rate Splunk as an eight out of ten. It is a robust platform and easy to use. 

We typically use it for centralized log management and SIEM functionality.

I am using the most recent version of it.

As per government requirements, a lot of government sites have to have the active monitoring of logs. So, we use their security appliance add-on that essentially combs through the log. It pre-filters and brings out the critical events so that you can focus on those instead of having to create your own searches and whatnot. It helps simplify the process of monitoring security events in the logs for people.

The flexibility of the search capability is most valuable. You can use it for more than just a basic log aggregator. It is powerful in that regard.

It is a good product, but the Achilles heel for a lot of organizations is the cost model for it because it gets expensive. That's because the model is based on how much data it processes a day, which can be prohibitive, especially if you have a lot of data. A lot of customers may not be ready for the sticker shock on how to fully leverage the product. I realized that the reason for that is that when it was originally designed, it was kind of like a big data modeling application. If they want to have a bigger customer base, they can come out with subsets of their product that are focused on specific things and have different pricing models. It may help with the cost.

To actively use the interface, you have to be able to speak their language. You really need to have Splunk training to use the tool. Integrations are not that bad, but once you get into that developer mindset and you understand the programming query language, then you're pretty flexible in making it work with other products. It could be daunting if you don't have the training. It is akin to being thrown and asked to go write a Python script when you don't know any of the Python language or PowerShell. If you don't know how to form the queries, the words, or the syntax, it can be a hurdle if you're looking everything up.

I have been using Splunk for about seven years.

It has been very stable. It is pretty rock solid.

It is as scalable as you can afford. We have a pretty small user base of 75 users, and it is mostly data center administration staff, application administrators, and security people. It is more of an in-house solution than a customer-facing solution.

Our usage is moderate. We're okay right now. We primarily use it as a SIEM and log aggregator. We could use it for other things, but the cost is what is preventing us from that at this point.

We've had a few calls, and they're very responsive.

We were using an assist log backend with Rsync and Kiwi prior to that. It was more of a co-solution than a cobbled-together solution. Splunk was a big improvement. The main reason for going for it was just the rate at which we were growing. We needed to have something that was more scalable than what we had before.

It was pretty straightforward as compared to most applications. It had the ability to auto-deploy agents to end devices. Splunk infrastructure itself wasn't difficult to deploy or set up. They package that process, and it is pretty well-rounded. They even offer a jumpstart install service to help get it off the ground when you buy in, and those components work really well together.

It was all done within a day. Some of the endpoints took a little bit longer, but the basic install was done in the day.

We used packaged professional services from a partner of Splunk. Our experience with them was very good.

In terms of maintenance, it is pretty simple. There are fewer patches than there would be for supporting a Windows device. There is not much labor to maintain it.

It can be cost-prohibitive when you start to scale and have terabytes of data. Its cost model is based on how much data it processes a day. If they're able to create scaled-down niche or custom package offerings, it may help with the cost. Instead of the full-blown features, if they can narrow the scope where it can only be used for a specific purpose, it would kind of create that market for the product, and it may help with the costing. When you start using it as a central aggregator and you're pumping tons of logs at it, pretty soon, you'll start hitting your cap on what it can process a day. Once you've got that, you're kind of defeating the purpose because you're going to have to scale back.

They're kind of pushing everybody away from perpetual licensing into subscription-based models, which a lot of companies are doing too, but in most environments that I've been in, they prefer to go the perpetual license and then just pay maintenance on top of it. That's because it's easier for them to forecast the big expense up front.

I would advise definitely taking advantage of their professional services and making sure that the administrators and whoever is going to be using the tool go through the training. The cost for the training, which depends on if you're commercial or government, is not that much, and there is a definite value there because if you're trying to learn it on your own with a book, it is going to take forever.

I would rate Splunk a seven out of 10. 

It's the mainstay of our monitoring solutions that we have for auto-logging, et cetera, for our enterprise solution.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the ability to capture the different data streams. We also appreciate the reporting in that aspect of Splunk. If we can grow now, with any security arena, it's going to be proactive, not reactive. It allows us to digest the information, the data, the different data streams, so we can make decisions based upon information that we receive, and it is pretty robust.

The configuration could be better.

We would like to see improved pricing, however, I'm kind of out of that arena. I make suggestions based upon the flexibility with which we serve our customer base, which is millions of our veterans. I would say that if someone was not familiar with it, one of the things that I've heard is that it's kind of hard for them to understand the whole thing. Splunk is just one piece to the puzzle. It's not the whole puzzle. It's kind of not the solution's fault, in that sense. That said, if it could be more accessible to people with different skillsets, that would be ideal.

We'd like to see reporting where there's a way that we can get a higher description without being too technical, for example, where it's kind of more of an executive-level of technical.

I've personally been using the solution for over ten years. At this point, it's been more than a decade. I've used it for a while now. 

We're partners and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Splunk.

We use the latest version. I'm not hands-on. I'm called the architect, however, we do use the latest version as that's a part of our configuration management framework, that all of our applications - especially in security - are up-to-date with the latest and greatest updates, bells, and whistles. We use both public and private clouds.

In terms of creating the solution, for what we do from an enterprise standpoint, everything from monitoring to data capture to reporting, we would rate it at a nine out of ten.

As there is no SIEM solution here at present, we are building it up through the assistance of a vendor. In the past I worked in the Splunk Cloud, which was seven-point something. With QRadar I worked on version 7.3. 

We use Splunk Cloud as a SIEM solution and to monitor traffic and the network for detection purposes. We can create use cases so that if the solution picks up on anything entering our organization, the malicious IP can be blocked. 

In respect of ones which are suspicious, based on the logs we pull from the data source, we can build the use cases accordingly and have our analysts work on these. 

In the several years I have worked with the solution, I have felt there to be a need for practice of queries and understanding. As with other areas needing practice, the more one learns and practices, the easier things become. 

While this is not terribly difficult, it is so when compared with QRadar. This holds true when we don't know the queries at all. Other than this, it is a great tool. 

The solution should also have more advanced capabilities in comparison with QRadar, which offers Watson. The product should have add-ons. 

The solution is stable and reliable. 

The solution is easy to scale, to add on and to integrate with other solutions. I am familiar with app integrations. Many solutions can be integrated with Splunk Cloud, such as CrowdStrike or Symantec. 

The solution's response time is not that fast. The experience of some of my peers is that the vendors have actively offered help. By contrast, when I tried Splunk Cloud's technical support I did not receive a response. 

We have not yet undertaken deployment. For the moment, we are on the EPS and discussing the proposed structure with the vendors. Our team is conducting talks with the vendors of QRadar. 

We are exploring multiple avenues in search of a one-SIEM solution. 

I am not in a position to comment on the pricing. 

By comparison, I feel QRadar to be better than Splunk Cloud, since it comes with Watson. 

Another advantage is that QRadar works like a threat intelligence tool. It, also, does not require queries, which Splunk Cloud does. It is important that we have an understanding of the queries for the purpose of pulling the logs which we seek. I feel QRadar to be better than Splunk Cloud, as it does not require us to work on the queries. 

I have worked on Splunk Cloud in the past, as well as on QRadar. As there is no SIEM solution in my current organization, we have plans to build it up. This is an ongoing process. I have suggested QRadar to my team and others are considering Sentinel. 

The solution is deployed on-cloud. 

I would recommend the solution to others since there are a couple of companies with many clients that are looking for Splunk Cloud, with which they are familiar. We must consider client demands when it comes to attracting projects. 

Even in India, most of the companies employ Splunk Cloud as the most prevalently used SIEM solution. Then comes QRadar, which is easier. So too, Splunk is less cost-effective than QRadar, although it is more in demand. There are a couple of companies with call centers that request Splunk Cloud. 

I rate Splunk Cloud as a seven out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for monitoring and security.

We can use the solution to try to find some correlational data. For example, in banks, there is usually a protocol whereby users cannot withdraw more than a certain amount of money from an ATM. However, we find that, when people are on holiday, they are trying to withdraw more than the allowed amount. It's a use case we can deploy in our country. You can set certain rules and watch the data in order to gain insights.

I cannot speak to a specific example of how the solution has assisted our organization.

The solution's capability is its most valuable aspect.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The solution has proven to be quite stable.

We've found the solution to be very mature.

The integration capabilities are excellent. They have apps that integrate quite well with Palo Alto and Cisco, for example.

Sometimes it becomes very difficult to find certain results from Splunk. Not all users are developers and they are not able to write code to find specific results or specific details from Splunk. From a user perspective, the solution needs to improve the search functionality.

The dashboard could be improved. If it was easier for non-developers or those working in network security, it would be ideal. It would be nice if they had a built-in dashboard for those who are less knowledgeable in coding.

The product is relatively expensive. 

I haven't been using the solution for very long just yet.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

We do not plan to increase usage at this time.

We've used technical support in the past. We've found them to be very helpful and responsive. We're satisfied with the level of support that we receive when we reach out for help.

I've previously used LogRhythm, among other solutions. We sell a few different solutions.

The initial setup is not too difficult. It's not overly complex. It's straightforward. The code is very easy.

The deployment took two or three months or so.

We used an integrator to assist us in the initial setup.

The problem with the product is that the price of Splunk is very high. It is an industry leader and therefore it's high in terms of price. That is the issue in our country. Sometimes people want to buy Splunk, however, due to the budget, they are not able to.

We are resellers.

We use a variety of deployment models, including private cloud and hybrid.

This solution is the best security solution. If a company is looking for the best, they have to buy Splunk. It is a very good and very mature solution. It is very easy to integrate with some other service or security solutions. If they have specific solutions that need to be integrated for monitoring purposes, it should be a problem. For example, it integrates very well with Cisco.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. We are quite happy with its capabilities.

We are using Splunk for cybersecurity operations.

Its dashboard is valuable. If you have a good knowledge of how to create a dashboard, you can create any dashboard related to cybersecurity. If fine-tuned, the alarms that are triggered for instant review are also very valuable and useful.

Splunk is query-based, which is not the case with most cybersecurity tools. It is based on search queries and can be difficult to use. It would be good if they can make it easier to understand how to create search queries. They can improve the knowledge base for better understanding.

To create your dashboard, you need to have a search query. We have multiple firewalls in our company, and we need a dashboard for them. It would be helpful if a default firewall dashboard is included in Splunk to make monitoring easier. If a dashboard is available for a security device, the operation part will be more efficient. We won't have to follow a manual process for this.

I have been using this solution for eight months.

In terms of operations, it is stable, but if you don't have a proper configuration and sizing, there could be many issues. It could be more efficient on the storage part. We are still in the deployment stage to be able to say that for sure.

It is very scalable. Currently, we have around 50 users. We will increase its usage if more people need access.

We have raised multiple tickets. Some of them are good, and some of them can be better. Overall, their technical support is okay.

We didn't use any other solution.

I didn't do the initial configuration. I take care of the operations part. One of our clients did it, and it is somehow complex, and it takes time. It also depends on your knowledge. If you don't have knowledge of Splunk, it is complex.

We are a partner of Splunk. So, we did not evaluate other solutions.

I would rate Splunk a seven out of ten.

There are quite a lot of things that we find useful. Splunk agents are useful and good. Its UI is quite impressive.

Its pricing model and integration with third-party services can be improved. We had faced an issue with integration. 

The alerting feature is currently not available with Splunk, but it is definitely available with Datadog and PagerDuty. They should include this feature.

A few dashboards in Splunk look quite old and are not that modern. They aren't bad, but improving these dashboards will definitely make Splunk more attractive and usable.

I read in a few blog posts that there were a few security incidents related to Splunk agents. So, it can be made more secure.

I have been using this solution for almost two years. I am using its latest version.

It is a stable product.

Splunk is definitely scalable.

I have not interacted with them. Another team is taking care of raising tickets with their technical support.

It is quite simple.

Its pricing model can be improved.

A few years ago, I would have definitely recommended Splunk, but nowadays, better alternatives are available. We are currently exploring a few other alternatives, so I won't recommend Splunk as of now.

I would rate Splunk a seven out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Splunk is something that we provide as a service to our customers.

The most valuable feature is the reporting and the information that is provided by the tool.

It is very easy to implement a PoC using Splunk, which will show the value of the reporting and data that it provides.

The integration is seamless with many devices and operating systems.

It is flexible enough that you can choose what kind of deployment model you want.

They have a large solution toolkit that supports IoT, wherein businesses can get a lot of help with the centralized management functionality. There are also tools to assist from the security and SIEM perspective, and there is a centralized dashboard.

Being a SIEM solution with a centralized dashboard, we would like to have more options to customize it. It should be easy to customize dashboards.

When we are monitoring something, we would like to have a more granular outlook. Splunk has a good dashboard that is easier to use than some competing products, but better customizability would be a great help for the users.

We have been working with Splunk for approximately three years.

This product is very stable.

Splunk is a very scalable solution. Being a Japanese product, they will ensure that all of the features work in any environment. It is very heterogeneous. It can integrate with Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris. It also supports IoT devices, mobile phones, and more.

We have more than 150,000 people using our services.

The Splunk team has good, proactive support. Also in terms of assisting with the installation, they are quite good.

Splunk is similar to IBM QRadar, which we also have experience with. However, Splunk has advanced SIEM features included with it, so we often use it to satisfy this requirement. Whenever an organization is looking to implement SIEM, they have the flexibility to choose Splunk, QRadar, or the ArcSight Logger solution.

One of the major differences that I see between Splunk and QRadar is that Splunk gives the users fewer devices, so they can do things quicker. 

The installation for Splunk is easier than competing products QRadar and ArcSight.

We have Splunk deployed on the cloud so that we can provide the service, but some of our customers have it installed on-premises.

All the user has to do is download the Splunk server agent, install it on the laptop or endpoint, integrate 50 or 100 devices, then see what kind of reporting is available.

We have an in-house team for deployment in maintenance. Splunk is a tool that does not require much staff to maintain. The users can start with a PoC, simply learn it, and deploy it for themselves. They don't require subject experts to be hired for the installation and configuration.

Price-wise, if you compare QRadar to Splunk for SIEM functionality then they are in the same range but when you integrate SOAR with these solutions, Splunk takes the lead and is more competitive.

This is a product that I recommend for anybody who wants and advanced SIEM solutions. Of the three that I have used including QRadar and ArcSight, Splunk is the one that I prefer.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.