Splunk Enterprise Security Reviews

I use the solution in my company to deal with certain migrations from a legacy SIEM solution to a new product like Splunk Enterprise Security or from on-prem to cloud migrations. Another use case involves implementing a new SIEM solution like Splunk Enterprise Security from scratch.

The most valuable features are its ability to transact in the cloud and its ability to onboard data easily with minimal connectors. Some of the new players in the market need to build new connectors to bring data into the SIEM solution. With Splunk Enterprise Security, you get built-in connectors, as it is a major platform.

The product's price may be an area of concern where improvements are required.

The metrics that I or my company's clients see in terms of the improvements from the use of Splunk stem from the fact that some of the metrics that the tool provides for senior leadership, specifically in the area of visibility when it comes to organizational split, considering that there are multiple lines of business. It would be a good feature in the tool if it could provide dashboarding for different lines of business in the product's next release.

One of the key areas where Splunk Enterprise Security can do better is if it integrates with AI solutions.

I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for five years.

Our company's clients who use the solution like the fact that they can rely on Splunk Enterprise Security as a product, especially since it is not a new entrant in the market. Though the tool has moved from on-prem to the cloud, I feel that the fundamentals of Splunk Enterprise Security are strong. The support structure available for Splunk is good.

Scalability is of paramount importance to a lot of clients. Some of the clients value the scalability feature of the product, and they are also willing to pay more to use such features. There are some pharmaceutical clients my company deals with who like the scalability feature but do not like the increase in the price attached to the scalability part.

To be very fair, I have not been directly exposed to Splunk's support team since I deal with our company's clients. I have not heard any major complaint from our company's client regarding Splunk's support team, so I assume that it is pretty good.

Deployment of the product is easier than migration. It is always better to write on a clean board than write on a board where someone has already written something. If you migrate from one solution to another, you also have to migrate some of the use cases, and you need to fine-tune them. If you are deploying a product from scratch, it is easier. My company also recently dealt with one of the clients, and we had to onboard 28 log sources in ten weeks with no issues. We also had to deal with heavy forwarders, syslog, universal forwarders, and everything under the sun, which was a big mix, making it a difficult environment. There were no issues during the onboarding process. In general, I am happy with the product.

ROI depends on a lot of calculations, so my company does not consider it. Most of the complaints from our clients are related to the cost of the product. Our company's clients are happy with the features and reliability of the product. Cost is one of the major factors that companies are migrating from Splunk Enterprise Security to some other solution. I don't know if it is relevant or not, but I feel that the acquisition of Splunk by Cisco has spooked a few of the clients since they are unsure if they will receive any support if they don't have a Cisco-based infrastructure and instead have some other company like HP supporting their infrastructure.

Splunk is really expensive compared to all the other tools on the market, including Microsoft Sentinel. Some of the clients prefer to go for a data lake kind of solution because of Splunk Enterprise Security's prices. Some of the clients have also mentioned that the pricing of Splunk Enterprise Security is not visible for them and it is based on storage because of which they are not able to control various aspects associated with the pricing part.

In cases where I see the replacement of existing SIEM solutions from my company's customers' end, I have dealt with scenarios where Microsoft Sentinel replaces Splunk Enterprise Security. I have also dealt with implementations associated with Splunk Enterprise Security from scratch. I have managed migrations of Splunk Enterprise Security from on-prem to the cloud.

The primary reason customers are moving to a cloud-based solution is that products like QRadar and LogRhythm did not initially offer cloud versions. The other reasons why customers are moving to cloud-based solutions are the difficulty of configuring their use cases and the problem of finding the right resources to support them. With Splunk and Microsoft Sentinel, resources will be much more available to users in the market, but for LogRhythm, the market is going down. Training opportunities, the building of accelerators, available information in the outside world, and a lot of reasons have prompted customers to move to cloud-based products.

I would say that it is easy to configure the use cases, and also to correlate use cases, which in turn helps reduce alert volume. More importantly the product can provide good visibility in the area of dashboarding, metrics and security events.

Splunk Enterprise Security helps me find any security event across multi-cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments.

Visibility across multiple environments or varied environments is absolutely important to our company's clients, and it is one of the key areas because most clients do not want to go and see multiple tools like CrowdStrike for endpoint protection. Our company's clients want to be able to see one dashboard with all the feeds coming in, along with all the alerts correlated to it.

The product provides relevant context to guide our company in the investigation. When you have more context, L1 or L2 support finds it easier to investigate. I don't know if Splunk already has an AI-based plugin tool or not. If AI is present in the product, it would help L1 and L2 support resolving tickets in a much faster manner, and it is also an area where context helps.

I have seen a reduction in the mean time to resolve from the use of Splunk Enterprise Security by around 30 to 40 percent if it is able to deal with contextualization. L1 and L2 support teams look at a particular incident, and if they end up spending more time adding the context or going through multiple tickets, it adds up the time needed to resolve an issue.

The product helps speed up security investigations by around 30 to 40 percent. Collecting the context is the key step for resolving or investigating purposes.

It is not fair to state why a certain rating is being given to a product since a person rates a solution on certain aspects, and it could be in terms of the migration part. If I speak in terms of the performance and support parts of the solution, I would rate the product a nine. If I consider the cost of implementing and maintaining the product, I would rate other products much better than Splunk Enterprise Security. As a company, we have implemented Splunk Enterprise Security multiple times, and we see the business associated with the product growing higher. My company also provides training to people in relation to Splunk Enterprise Security. My company hopes to do more business with Splunk Enterprise Security. My company has 3,00,000 employees.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

Splunk Enterprise Security provides us with both log monitoring and alerting capabilities from a centralized interface.

Splunk Enterprise Security's detection capability is good. Real-time alerts are crucial for threat detection. When unknown traffic is identified, incidents are automatically created and alerts are sent to the monitoring team for prompt action.

Our mobile device ordering website experienced a fraud attempt. We identified a surge in traffic originating from the same IP address through Splunk Enterprise Security. This allowed us to swiftly block the suspicious activity, potentially saving millions of dollars.

Integrating Splunk Enterprise Security with other tools is easy.

It is easy for us to monitor our multiple cloud environments using Splunk.

Splunk offers good visibility across our multiple environments. We can monitor roughly 80 percent of our environment through Splunk.

Splunk is our primary tool for analyzing real-time logs to detect malicious activity. These logs are then used to create security incidents and trigger alerts for further action.

We can see the benefits of Splunk Enterprise Security quickly after deployment.

Splunk Enterprise Security reduces our alert volume because it is precise and customizable.

Splunk Enterprise Security helps us speed up our security investigations by sending alerts and providing a deep dive into the logs.

Splunk's visualizations make it easy for users to understand the data. Additionally, Splunk can ingest all our data, creating a centralized and informative platform. This combination is a powerful asset for data analysis.

Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing structure could be more accessible for smaller organizations. Licensing costs can be a barrier for those with limited budgets.

I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for 5 years.

I would rate the stability a 9 out of 10. With a stable environment, we may encounter issues 2 percent of the time.

I would rate the scalability an 8 out of 10. 

Splunk now offers SmartStore, which automatically scales storage capacity without sacrificing performance.

The support team is supportive and quick to respond.

Splunk offers Platinum, Gold, and Silver support. With the Platinum package, they respond within two hours.

Positive

We transitioned from AppDynamics to Splunk Enterprise Security, which provides a valuable single pane of glass for managing and viewing security metrics.

The initial deployment is easy. The deployment for Splunk Enterprise Security is quick.

By automating our monitoring and alerting with Splunk Enterprise Security, we've achieved a significant return on investment. This has freed up over 190 days of manual monitoring effort by our team, resulting in overall cost savings of around 30 million dollars.

The licensing costs are high for Splunk Enterprise Security.

I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security 8 out of 10.

I highly recommend Splunk Enterprise Security to anyone looking for a comprehensive security solution. It's a single tool that can monitor and manage our entire security posture, including business metrics, IT infrastructure, and security alerts. Splunk also simplifies incident creation and log management, providing a central location for all your security data.

Splunk Enterprise Security is used by 30,000 people across multiple locations in our organization.

The widespread adoption of Splunk Enterprise Security requires regular maintenance to ensure optimal performance.

Organizations with low logging volumes can benefit from using the open-source ELK Stack.

The resilience Splunk Enterprise Security offers is good.

We mainly use the Splunk Enterprise Security app to use Splunk as a SIEM. I have worked with Splunk on-premises, which is Splunk Enterprise, and I have worked with Splunk Cloud as well. 

We mostly use Splunk for the SOC environment. We use Splunk for security incident monitoring.

Splunk Enterprise Security fastens our security investigations.

Our organization monitors multiple cloud environments. We have more than 50 customers. Customers have their own licenses, and for some customers, they are shared. We have a single Splunk console. We have customized Splunk, and we have onboarded multiple customers. For some customers, we have integrated Splunk with SOAR. There is a single console to monitor SIEM and other devices. It saves the analysis work. It provides good visibility as compared to the other SIEM products I have worked with. 

We use the Threat Topology and MITRE ATT&CK framework features. You can map your use cases with the MITER ATT&CK framework. It is common in all SIEMs nowadays. It is good. It gives a good mapping of the use case and a better understanding.

Splunk Enterprise Security has not helped reduce our alert volume. It behaves as we configure it. The engineer handles the fine-tuning of the use case and reduction in the alerts.

The fast search is valuable. As compared to other SIEMs, Splunk is very fast in terms of the search and providing data.

The customization of the use cases is another valuable feature. It is query-based, and now, there is a feature to have machine learning as well. We can write advanced-level use cases, which is a limitation of other SIEMs.

The third point is the device integration. It is very smooth. If I need to integrate devices for logs, it is easier with Splunk. We can integrate different applications, network devices, and databases. It is also very rich in documents. It is the best.

Splunk does not provide any default threat intelligence like Microsoft Sentinel, but you can integrate any third-party threat intelligence with Splunk. By default, no threat intelligence suite is there, whereas, with IBM QRadar or Microsoft Sentinel, the default feature of threat intelligence is there. It is free. It would be better if Splunk could provide a default threat intelligence suite.

The second issue is that Splunk is expensive compared to many other SIEM tools in the market. A competitive price will work better.

The third issue is that Splunk Cloud is sometimes slow. If I create more use cases, Splunk will be slow because they provide limited resources in Splunk Cloud. They can do some optimization there.

The last issue is that they used to give a trial version of the Splunk Enterprise Security app that we could showcase to customers for demonstration, but they have stopped that free trial version. If they can start that again, it will be better. It will help to showcase the capability of Splunk.

I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for seven years.

It is sometimes slow. It also depends on the number of use cases or queries. You need to optimize the use cases or queries that are running and consuming a lot of resources. I have also seen Splunk Cloud hanging a bit. I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of stability.

We have contacted their support many times. Their support is average. We sometimes have a hard time with their support. They are not very reliable, but this is the case with all SIEM products.

Neutral

We are also using Microsoft Sentinel and IBM QRadar. We have also used ArcSight. For some customers, we are using LogRhythm and the RSA solution. Different customers have different SIEM tools, but I find Microsoft Sentinel and Splunk better than the others in the market. I feel Splunk is the most mature tool at this time. It is very easy to customize. You can do whatever you want.

IBM QRadar is the cheapest option available in the market. It is a traditional SIEM tool. It is not as fast as Splunk or Microsoft Sentinel, but from a costing perspective, it is convenient. There are also a few open-source SIEM tools. Many companies are using those, but if you go with a commercial tool, IBM QRadar is very good in terms of cost value. When it comes to customization and maturity, Splunk Enterprise Security is definitely number one. Microsoft Sentinel comes second, and IBM QRadar comes third.

It is easier than other tools.

We implement it for our clients. The number of people involved depends on the license utilization, the number of devices, and the time frame. Two to three months are normally required for the full integration of a customer environment, and a minimum of two people are required for the integration.

It is expensive. That is why many customers have moved to IBM QRadar. The price is definitely a challenge for customers.

If budget is not an issue, you can go ahead with Splunk Enterprise Security. Nowadays, Splunk is ready to negotiate. With good negotiation, you might get a good deal. If you are a large organization with more than 2,000 devices or more than 500 licenses, Splunk is the best choice. If price is not an issue, you can blindly go with Splunk because it is the most mature tool in the market at this time. Microsoft Sentinel is scaling up, but it is still not there where Splunk Enterprise Security is.

Overall, I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security a nine out of ten.

The main use cases are with the firewall, DNS, and Windows events. These are the three basic ones to start with. Once they're done with all the compatibility and introductions, custom use cases will follow.

It's currently in the implementation phase. But, it will surely improve response time and make it easier to collect and check everything in one place. Instead of going to multiple dashboards and running multiple queries, all can be integrated into one dashboard. You can just click and then go drill down into deeper levels and get more information.

Splunk Enterprise Security provides end-to-end visibility into our environment. It's very important because: 

1. This tool is used as SIEM implementation. End-to-end visibility is really important in such a case; if something is missed, it's an error. 
2. Also, we belong to the retail sector with over 700,000 employees. We have a lot of endpoints and everything is open, so end-to-end visibility is essential.

It helped our organization to ingest normalized data. With Windows, DNS, firewalls, and the open use cases we've checked, we've gotten more data in. The compatibility with the add-ons helps us add more data in the same compatible format and use data models to elaborate and make it faster.

The investigation dashboard provides a lot of value. In the same dashboard, we get all the drill downs, raw events, and information about what the particular user is doing or where the vulnerability started, all in the same dashboard.

It helps us reduce our mean time to resolve. Now, we can see all the incidents on a single dashboard and it could be assigned to the analysts at the same time on the incident review. People can start working on it right away, so it does reduce the mean time to respond.

Splunk's unified platform helps consolidate networking, security, IT, and IT observability tools. But our major focus or use case is more on the security side. We don't use observability, so we just use logs, matrices, and other security-related features.

Incident review is pretty valuable. You can have everything in one place, review it, and assign things to analysts, and they can work on it. 

We also have different teams segmented; it is not one team. So, we brought that using the teams method in Enterprise Security, which I think most people are not using. This way, different users have different dashboards or lists of incidents.

One thing is multi-tenancy, which is not currently not there. The concept of Enterprise Security assumes only one team using Splunk, but in many companies, including ours, that's not the case. We have multiple security teams operating under one umbrella, with different people using it for different smaller companies. If multi-tenancy could be incorporated, it would surely help us. 

We started with it last year. We integrated it last year, and the SOC team is now handling it. They're making it SIM compatible, introducing the first few use cases, and working with the data. 

So, we bought the license nearly a year ago, and started implementing it about six months ago.

Stability is there, but every release has some bugs. For example, in this release, indexes were down, searches were down, and the monitoring console wasn't working. So, it's a bit tough.

It's still being implemented, and a lot of work needs to be done. But, considering the pricing and everything, I would give it a seven out of ten. It does have a lot of use cases, but a lot of work has to be done beforehand. Our data wasn't totally SIEM compliant because we used prebuilt solutions and changed the data format.

We use Splunk Operator on Kubernetes, so it's not on-prem or Splunk Cloud. Customer support is not good at all.

For example, we upgraded the system on Saturday and raised an incident. With Operator, you can only raise a P3 incident, so we needed to escalate it and get the developers involved. Support cannot handle such cases. We always have to get the developers involved to get the issues fixed. This happened very recently. But it is very common; the support for Kubernetes is zero.  

The company didn't have a SIEM solution. It was more of SOAR, so we used FortiSIEM for that. We still use it. 

Setup is not that difficult. You just have to install the search head cluster and a normal app. Data normalization is the main thing required for Enterprise Security. SIEM compatibility is the most important thing. If it's not there, then it won't work.

The deployment of the solution is pretty simple, if your data is SIEM compliant. If not, then you need to make it SIEM compliant. Otherwise, you cannot use the solution.

We have a Splunk partner that helps us with integration and other stuff.

Pricing is a bit costly. It always is.

We considered a couple of other brands. We ran a couple of POCs with other enterprise tools.

Since we've been using Splunk for nearly four years, it was easier to incorporate Enterprise Security. We did try other SIEM solutions like Fortinet, but since Splunk was already there in place and had all of our normalized data, it made more sense to use Enterprise Security.

We use Splunk Enterprise Security to ensure the security of our endpoints, including corporate workstations, tracking proxy logs, and all of the other benefits that Splunk Enterprise Security brings, including observability and visibility into the environment.

We run Splunk Enterprise Security on a single search head, and it talks to about nine separate clusters. It's a hybrid environment of on-prem and AWS. Ideally, we will migrate that to a search head cluster for Enterprise Security for high availability. Then, in the upgrade process, we generally have about two hours of downtime when we upgrade Enterprise Security. Ideally, moving to the cluster environment will allow us to mitigate that entirely. So, we did some assessments earlier in the year. We've gotta do some finalized testing, but we're hoping that will eliminate almost the entire two hours of downtime for our customers when upgrading. Then, it's two hours from start to finish to get the search head back up, and that does not include backfill time or anything like that. It could be a good full workday. So getting that workday back is going to be very important for us, and that's where I think we're gonna end up evolving for the Enterprise Security environment.

One benefit we have seen using Splunk Enterprise Security is keeping it all integrated, so no jumping between tools during investigations is the biggest benefit from the analyst's perspective. When we're setting up an investigation, it allows them to use one tool versus having to compartmentalize all the tools together, link it together, document it, and ultimately end up in one spot. Using Enterprise Security as it allows for integrated tracking for the investigations.

It's very important that Splunk Enterprise Security provides end-to-end visibility into our environment because not seeing something is a potential risk to the business. Having that visibility also assures the business, all the way up to the C Suite level, that there is coverage. And if not, we at least have that identified as an uncovered portion.

As long as we can point the data into Splunk Enterprise Security, it is easy to identify security events across cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments. Getting it into Splunk is typically the challenge because it needs to be in a usable format. So once I've got it properly shaped and tagged, the rest trickles down. Generally, there are a lot of good TAs for getting data into Splunk around the cloud providers. So we don't have to customize it as much. It's just about getting it implemented, going through the checklist, and doing our due diligence to make sure we have the coverage we need. We will see events as long as they're flowing into Splunk. Once it gets into the data models in Enterprise Security, it will show up.

As far as ingesting data, Splunk Enterprise Security specifically hasn't helped. We shape and normalize our data to meet Enterprise Security's needs. So, we did that as a preemptive during our initial assessment. What does it come in as? What do we want it to look like? How can Enterprise Security more optimally use it? Will it hit the data models? Will it show up? Things like that. So, a lot of that is already there before Enterprise Security, but then using the data is where Enterprise Security shines. It makes the data more usable across all data sources. We don't have to know what to look for in each data type. We could go to the data model and view it.

We've increased our alert volume a little bit, not in a bad way, but getting new detections. The risk-based alerting has decreased. So what is happening elsewhere in the environment correlates with that event, and those risks are bubbling up to the top, whereas somebody getting locked out isn't as important as an account takeover. It's hard to portray that image with one event, but a series of events on the timeline makes it a little easier.

Splunk Enterprise Security lets us know who owns what hardware, who should access it, and who shouldn't, more specifically, during an investigation or escalation path. So we know there's a problem. Who do we talk to next to start that process and up the chain? We have a lot of that in there as well, which helps.

Splunk Enterprise Security has generally helped reduce our meantime to resolve. How much is hard to say because it depends on the investigation's scope and scale. It does help the analysts get a clearer picture of what's happening everywhere in the environment. 

Enterprise Security will automatically correlate those events for us. When an analyst gets assigned to that investigation, it becomes looking at the picture and putting the puzzle together versus having to go through a threat hunt or find those indicators and then identify the account lockouts and takeovers. It's already in one pane of glass, and then that gets us to the meantime to resolution quicker. 

It has decreased our mean time to detection, especially for the high critical alerts. When we leverage that risk-based alerting, we can say, alright, multiple events have now happened to propagate this into a larger event instead of trying to correlate that as an individual or a team of analysts. Ad hoc is going to always be slower than automatic. Doing it in the back end means my analysts get there and get the job done quicker.

Splunk Enterprise Security has helped with our organization's resilience. We generally use observability metrics to determine the state of the hardware and the status of the environment at the time, so that has been a good point. It's definitely made us more resilient to figure out what happened post-incident and on what time scale and then go back and try to either remediate or mitigate that wherever possible. The historical context is just as valuable as their live real-time learning context.

The most valuable feature of Splunk Enterprise Security is the threat intelligence integration because essentially having to go out and correlate all the data on our own becomes convoluted. We don't have the resources, so having that included in the product makes it easier for us.

For us, the area that Splunk Enterprise Security can improve is performance optimization. Enterprise Security is so critical that right now, we're working on getting it to a clustered state to have high availability. The challenge there is hardware procurement and utilization. It's very resource-intensive. A type of performance optimization would generally be a huge improvement.

I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for six years.

Splunk Enterprise Security seems stable to me. I haven't seen many issues, so I'm looking to try and test the latest version.

Scalability is a mixed bag. So, when we first started Enterprise Security, they told us not to cluster it. Now they're recommending we cluster it. We haven't gone down that road yet. I am looking forward to it. But if they say it can scale, they have customers that have done it. We gotta go through the growing pains of implementing it, rolling it out, and making sure it's ready to go. I think it's possible, but I have no formal experience yet. I am looking forward to it.

We started in Splunk, used it historically, and saw the product's value. It becomes the other data that would not be allowed for business reasons. How can we leverage that to provide value for the business? I know a lot about searchability this year, such as trace logs and metrics. These are generally good, but some trace stacks can be a lot of ingestion against our license. If we could put that in somewhere, that would not be as cost-effective, ideally. The trade-off is performance. Splunk is very performant. It does its job well. It's just a little pricey for the non-business critical logs.

The deployment is generally good. We must stand up the search heads, get them ready, tie them into the index clusters, and then deploy. Generally, we don't expose anything to the customers until it's production-ready. So deploying it was just getting it out there and built, doing some finalized testing to make sure it's ready to be used by the end customer. 

We implemented Splunk Enterprise Security ourselves. Through Splunk, we've engaged some professional services to ensure that our plan of attack is moving in the right direction. Professional services have also provided a lot of guidance.

We have seen a return on investment with Splunk Enterprise Security. Getting that holistic view. Splunk gives us a better picture of what's going on in our environment. Without it, we would have to go hunt for it. It's like Google searching for logs. It's easy, and everybody uses Google. So it's time-tested in the market. It's just about how much data we can get in, how we're storing it, retention, pulling it back, and what goes with that associated.

While Splunk offers generous developer licenses and obtaining annual licenses is straightforward, the cost is a major consideration. As open-source competitors become more sophisticated, Splunk will need to address this pricing issue in the future.

We have not used other SIEM tools in the past, but we are evaluating other tools. We don't want to migrate away from Splunk. We want to replicate it at a larger scale for non-security-based data, such as application and developer data. Anything they want to throw in and search is fine. But at Splunk's current cost, it is generally very expensive to do non-business-critical logs in that environment.

I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security eight out of ten. Things that could be better would be further integrations into other security tools. I know a series of threat intelligence feeds can be integrated, and I'm sure they are slated. It's just a matter of getting the resources to integrate them.  Splunk Enterprise Security is a solid product. I run it in my home lab as well. It's generally one of the better Splunk apps.

As a Splunk engineer, I collect data from various sources, including Universal Forwarder, Heavy Forwarder, DB Connect, and Syslog to monitor application logs. This data is used to create dashboards that visualize application health and identify potential security incidents. Additionally, I configure alerts to notify teams via Slack or email when CPU or memory usage reaches critical thresholds, allowing for prompt resolution. Furthermore, I use Splunk to create KPIs and NDDs for various aspects of the organization, including a custom ITSI service for Microsoft 365. This service monitors child entities like Teams, Outlook, and Edge within a parent application, tracking metrics like team member logins and meetings, CPU usage, and memory usage. All this information is consolidated into a three-page ITSI report.

Splunk Enterprise Security helps us detect malicious activity, such as failed login attempts by unauthorized users. These attempts, whether brute-force attacks or phishing attempts, trigger alerts with detailed information about the incident mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. This allows our security team to investigate and take appropriate action quickly.

We managed Splunk's large clustered environments, I oversaw data collection from roughly 750 applications via universal deployment clients. This experience, coupled with my nearly six years of Splunk expertise, made monitoring application logs and creating Splunk knowledge bases straightforward tasks. While processing task cut-off tickets from the application team could be time-consuming, the actual monitoring itself was easy to manage.

The end-to-end visibility provided by Splunk is important because our company uses applications like K-Connect and Splunk to monitor user activity across different sectors. Having previously worked in both healthcare and finance, I'm familiar with how this process works. We access user information including personal data to track their activity from start to finish within our systems. Splunk allows us to mark specific user data points for further analysis, ensuring we have a full view of user or patient activity within each organization we serve.

Splunk helps me find security events across multi-cloud and on-prem platforms. I would identify missing data by checking the last hour's timeframe (span=1h). If on-prem or cloud data was missing, I'd investigate which logs weren't being ingested, whether an indexer was down, or if a forwarder wasn't sending data. Additionally, I'd check if the application or event log volume was overwhelming the universal forwarder, requiring a queue to process the data effectively.

Splunk improves our ability to handle data from applications. This data is often unstructured or unavailable in a usable format. To make it usable, we used to normalize the logs manually through back-end commands and edit various Splunk consoles and platforms. This process transformed the data into a structured, human-readable event format, allowing us to extract the information we needed.

We can identify potential malicious activity through Splunk by analyzing database logs with SQL queries. For instance, a high number of failed login attempts within a short timeframe could indicate unauthorized access attempts. Additionally, with multi-factor authentication systems like Duo, a user logging in from two geographically distant countries within a short period might be suspicious. To address this, I've developed SQL queries that check for logins within a one-hour timeframe across different countries. These queries trigger alerts on a dashboard, allowing IT to investigate the user's IP address and determine if the login is legitimate.

Splunk has significantly improved our business resilience by providing a single pane of view for all our data. This visualization allows us to monitor for anomalies, including unusual application activity, unauthorized executables, and suspicious shell scripts running on both Linux and Windows servers. By triggering alerts for these events, Splunk empowers our organization to proactively identify and address potential threats, ultimately improving overall stability.

Splunk allows us to easily check the data for malicious activity. It also helps reduce the alert volume by allowing us to set thresholds for alerts. For example, we only receive an alert when the CPU usage exceeds 90 percent or the number of failed logs is more than 15.

Splunk helps us investigate by providing relevant context from system logs. We can search the Splunk logs for specific applications and timeframes, and then examine all the data fields for suspicious activity, failed login attempts, or any other anomalies.

It helps security teams investigate threats faster by providing a central platform to collect and analyze data from various security applications. This focus on enterprise security allows teams to identify and respond to threats across the organization, leveraging frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to match attacker techniques and tactics.

Splunk's strength lies in its single-page view. This interface allows us to explore all our data, build dashboards with alerts, and visualize real-time information through various charts like column, bar, and pie formats, providing a full user experience.

Due to its high licensing cost, Splunk is out of reach for many organizations. Making their licensing more affordable would open up Splunk's solution to a wider range of users.

I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for six years.

Splunk Enterprise Security is a stable solution.

Splunk Enterprise Security has excellent scalability.

The technical support is good.

Positive

The deployment is complicated  because our organization works with on-prem servers. All the data needs to be duplicated and all the searches and indexes need to happen properly.

The Splunk licensing is high.

While more affordable, alternative SIEM solutions lack the flexibility and in-depth visualization capabilities offered by Splunk.

I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security nine out of ten.

While Splunk Enterprise Security offers a user-friendly interface, its true power lies in its ability to create highly customized dashboards that streamline investigations and reporting.

My role is to design and implement and manage a strong environment. I need to ensure the available insights can be extracted efficiently and I use the solution for that. I also configure the Splunk custom dashboard and optimize searches to meet specific business needs. We also do a lot of troubleshooting and upgrading.

The security part is useful as it helps secure the entire environment. I designed the security aspect of it for a lot of applications in my company. It's the security thread within the application that we build. I'm able to use Splunk to secure the applications. 

We use the solution to monitor multiple cloud environments. We can monitor even on Amazon products. It's a good source for monitoring all types of applications. 

I can manage and correlate different kinds of searches within my environment. It's good for performance monitoring as well. I can do auditing and reporting through Enterprise Security.

The solution gives us visibility into multiple types of environments. There's a good level of cost optimization as well. It's good for end detection and prevention. I can identify anomalies and get a data view of fraudulent activities. You can uncover the source type and the IP address from where things originate.

Splunk gives us the capability to handle insider threat detection. I'm able to create my own dashboard that will visualize the information. It does depend on how you handle the configuration and permissions. 

We do use the MITRE ATT&CK framework. It helps us discover the scope of the incidents. It helps us to target incidents immediately. We're able to quickly resolve it and stop it. We get data visibility to see what's coming in, which helps us act fast. 

We can work with data from any source as long as you configure it correctly.

The solution has helped us to reduce our alert volume. You can tune your alert thresholds. You can also create rules to define your alerts. It gives you the capacity to optimize queries as well. 

They didn't use to be able to integrate with Cisco. However, this has changed now. 

Some minor features could be added. However, I need to do more research. 

The user experience could be improved. It could be more intuitive.

There should be a way to do bulk visualization reporting. 

I've been using Splunk for 7 years. 

We haven't had any downtime. The only issues come up is if there is an extension of limits. If you extend beyond your license, you may get downtime. 

The solution is scalable. It's easy to manage. 

We have contacted technical support for troubleshooting. No solution or machine is perfect. We had an issue where a new hire misconfigured some servers and they were able to offer us support. They are helpful, however, they do need to be faster in response. They do provide a to of documentation that can be helpful. 

Neutral

I'm also familiar with CloudWorks. However, Enterprise Security has more features and can provide more insights. 

I'm familiar with Dynatrace.

Splunk was already in place when I arrived. I simply tried to implement different strategies in multiple environments. 

Splunk is pay-as-you-go. The pricing depends on your use case. You only really pay for the amount of data you are dealing with. 

I'm a Splunk customer. 

People shouldn't necessarily look for the cheapest pricing. You need to look at what will optimize costs and the time it takes to secure the data. The most important thing, before cost, is being able to successfully secure your data. You should choose your solution based on your use case as well. 

I'd rate the solution 8 out of 10. 

We use Splunk Enterprise Security as the main SIEM system for our operation center. We use it for monitoring detection, and alert management.

We implemented Splunk Enterprise Security to help detect attacks on our network.

Splunk Enterprise Security is highly flexible, allowing us to create whatever we desire. This exemplifies its inherent power. The visibility it offers is notably robust. We can craft it to our needs and even utilize various frameworks within Splunk, prepackaged for security purposes. We possess distinct applications hosting diverse dashboards, catering to numerous security products, including those from different vendors.

The effectiveness of Splunk Enterprise Security insider threat detection capabilities, aimed at identifying unfamiliar threats, relies on whether we establish alerts based on the rules we formulate. If we construct rules incorporating user behavior criteria, the system functions optimally. It appears that there is an Extended User and Entity Behavior Analytics add-on available, which requires a separate license in addition to the enterprise security license. This add-on utilizes machine learning and encompasses multiple developed use cases. While it has limitations, it effectively serves the specific use cases it is designed for.

The threat intelligence framework within Splunk is also highly potent. We can ingest, link, and integrate external data feeds. Concerning IOCs, there are numerous pre-configured alerts within the system that rely on a feed of undesirable IPs. If one of these IPs triggers any of the alerts, such as those generated by our firewall's traffic logs, and the IP matches the bad IPs in the threat intelligence feed, the system correlates this information. If the flagged IP is detected within our network or appears in our firewall logs, an automatic alert is generated. We simply need to ingest the external feed. Subsequently, if the system identifies the IP anywhere, we will receive corresponding alerts.

I appreciate the new MITRE ATT&CK feature. I believe it's a valuable addition and reasonably priced. It seems the feature has been largely developed through marketing efforts, utilizing the capabilities of Splunk to display the MITRE ATT&CK map and the associated rules. This is important since MITRE ATT&CK encompasses over a hundred techniques. It presents the information to us based on the MITRE ATT&CK framework to illustrate ongoing activities. However, achieving a comprehensive understanding of each technique within the MITRE ATT&CK framework requires significant effort and adjustments.

Splunk Enterprise Security has enhanced our organization by offering increased visibility. If any adverse incidents occur, we are promptly informed. Even without configuring the custom rules, Splunk provides effective out-of-the-box rules that help prevent attacks. Consequently, it effectively halts these attacks. In fact, we have been able to detect and thwart potential attacks in their initial stages. This exemplifies the benefits it provides us.

Splunk Enterprise Security has helped to speed up our security investigations. We are now able to complete our investigations within three or four days. 

The most valuable features include agility and Splunk Enterprise Security's ability to quickly search for alerted items, as well as the capacity to create custom alerts using the SQL language employed by Splunk. This makes it a highly potent and versatile solution tailored to both user and company needs.

Splunk could enhance its services by providing more comprehensive professional assistance aimed at optimizing our investment. This aspect seems lacking as our expenses increase with higher data connectivity, seemingly without much consideration, as this translates to increased revenue for them. The challenge lies in the fact that we don't always require all the amassed data. Oftentimes, clients are uncertain about their actual data needs. Therefore, if Splunk integrated a service dedicated to system optimization and pricing, focusing on essential monitoring data while eliminating less crucial elements, it could potentially lead to cost savings for the customers. This strategic move would demonstrate their commitment to customers beyond just financial gain. It would highlight their genuine intention to provide support, streamline operations, and maximize the potential of this technology for individuals and their respective companies.

Splunk provides automation for large-scale environments where numerous servers are present. Consequently, efficient management of these servers becomes imperative. Currently, our management server operates using a top-down approach. This involves establishing connections from the main management server to every individual leaf and subsequently, to each lower-level server.

However, this architecture lacks inherent security measures. In the current setup, Splunk employs multiple collectors to gather data. Subsequently, this data is relayed upward, filtered, and then once again transmitted to the main management server. Notably, data traffic consistently flows from external sources toward the central management hub. This design enhances security, as even if a hacker were to compromise or gain control of the management server, their influence would be limited. The data originates externally and travels inwards, preventing unauthorized access to the entire system. 

In contrast, the proposed approach for managing extensive infrastructures situates the management hub at the core. This central position allows us to establish connections from the hub to the various peripheral components, even if they are located on a secure network. However, this configuration carries significant risks. A security breach at the central hub could potentially grant an attacker elevated permissions. This would enable them to compromise the entire network by gaining access to all Splunk nodes within the company. This architecture is vulnerable and has room for improvement.

I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for four years.

I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security's stability a seven out of ten. This is because the system lacks built-in protection against certain issues. It alerts us when there are problems in the system, which we then need to address. However, these issues are not always easily fixable, setting it apart from other systems. For instance, sometimes the system slows down while we're working. This can occur when a new alert is implemented, leading to high resource usage and system instability. We are then required to identify and rectify the specific cause of this problem. This might involve disabling or adjusting the alert to ensure it doesn't negatively impact the system's performance.

Splunk Enterprise Security's ability to scale is good. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support is good.

Positive

Previously, I used QRadar, McAfee, and ArcSight. However, Splunk Enterprise Security is a more modern solution. While ArcSight from HP is powerful, it is an older system with limited flexibility and complex architecture. Many companies implemented SIEM systems before Splunk became available. It seems that most large companies might still be using ArcSight, but other competitors have entered the market since then.

McAfee attempted to develop a similar system, but it lacked scalability and was better suited for small businesses rather than larger enterprises. QRadar, on the other hand, remains robust, but it lacks Splunk's flexibility. One of Splunk's notable advantages is its ability to generate alerts and then allow users to enter searches and queries to investigate network activities and log data. This process, known as threat hunting, enables users to conduct specific searches, such as identifying individuals who accessed a particular system and the internet between four and five o'clock on a Friday. Splunk promptly provides the desired results, typically within a few minutes, making it a strong choice for this purpose. Additionally, Splunk Enterprise Security features a highly effective filtering mechanism.

I participated in the planning and implementation of Splunk Enterprise Security, as well as the creation of all rulesets and alerts. I am also configuring it to align with our technical framework.

Individuals who market Splunk Enterprise Security often claim that it can be deployed within half a day, which is quite amusing. While it is conceivable to perform the installation in that timeframe, the real complexity arises when we must establish connections with numerous systems. This involves accessing each system external to our main setup, configuring it, and directing the system to send its logs to Splunk. On the Splunk side, we encounter the need to create parsing mechanisms that allow proper data reading. This entails installing applications capable of correctly parsing the data, and addressing issues where parsing is inadequate. We then proceed to work with the data. Although Splunk provides some pre-configured rules, we also need to develop our own rules to identify specific events and potential attacks. The process of rule creation demands a substantial investment in writing rule sets. Additionally, integrating a threat intelligence framework becomes essential. We aspire to leverage the micro-framework we have established. Splunk Enterprise Security undeniably possesses considerable capabilities. Nevertheless, it necessitates continuous effort to unlock its full potential and achieve ongoing enhancements.

The solution's complete implementation may require up to one year. Throughout most of the deployment, we had a team of two members, occasionally expanding to three.

For the implementation, we used two integrators and Splunk Professional Services.

Considering the fact that Splunk Enterprise Security aids in thwarting attackers from gaining access to our environment, I would correlate this with a return on investment.

Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is high. Larger companies may afford it, but I believe that in the current market situation, where everyone is facing challenges, financial resources are tight. Even stock market tech companies are embracing cost-saving measures. Expenses are now more constrained compared to a few years ago when companies had greater spending capacity. Companies are reluctant to make hefty payments. While Splunk is cheaper than Microsoft Sentinel, QRadar is priced at half the cost of Splunk.

Splunk Enterprise Security's licensing is typically determined by the data throughput we handle. Additionally, they offer an alternative pricing model which involves payment based on CPU usage. This newer model was introduced as a response to Elastic Security. However, Splunk enforces licensing in either scenario. 

I rate Splunk Enterprise Security a nine out of ten.

We do not monitor the cloud environments with Splunk. While we have several cloud environments, we avoid using Splunk for this purpose due to its high cost. To utilize Splunk, it would be necessary to place the Splunk engine in the cloud and gather all the logs from various cloud sources, resulting in substantial expenses due to the large volume of logs. As a result, our primary usage of Splunk is on-premise. Instead, we employ different systems to monitor the cloud, generating alerts through various security mechanisms. These alerts are then processed in Splunk, reducing both data traffic and costs.

Splunk Enterprise Security's capabilities to analyze malicious activities and detect breaches are similar to those of other systems. Its effectiveness depends on the rules we develop within it. To truly maximize its value and tailor it to the organization's needs, a significant amount of additional work and utilization of professional services are required.

The reduction of the alert volume presents a challenge due to the X number of personnel in the security alert center. They can effectively handle only Y alerts per day without experiencing fatigue. When the volume surpasses this limit, they tend to merely open and close alerts without thorough investigation. It's as if they've become weary of the process. Therefore, we must determine the optimal number of alerts per day and adjust the rules accordingly. The primary objective is to achieve a statistically reasonable number of alerts per day. This number should be somewhat higher than the current rate, but not three times greater, as exceeding this threshold would render their efforts ineffective. Conversely, if the number of alerts is too high, the personnel's capacity to take action is undermined, resulting in a lack of meaningful outcomes. Striking a balanced middle ground is imperative. This approach enables us to effectively identify and address crucial matters while ensuring our personnel can thoroughly investigate each alert.

Depending on the goals an organization aims to achieve, if their sole focus is on finding the most economical solution and they do not prioritize comprehensiveness, then QRadar would suffice. However, if they seek instant access to answers, I would recommend Splunk Enterprise Security.

Splunk Enterprise Security is deployed across our entire network.

Maintenance is necessary for the system, and updates are needed periodically. Whenever we acquire a new system, we must connect it to Splunk.

Resilience constitutes a crucial component of Splunk Enterprise Security, contributing significantly to the safeguarding of our system.

I recommend Splunk Enterprise Security for organizations that have the budget, time, and skill to properly utilize the solution. I do recommend paying for Splunk Professional Services.