Buying Intelligence
for Enterprise Technology

Splunk Enterprise Security has a learning curve that needs to be improved. I have seen users struggle with Splunk just because of the language they've used to create it. I've recently started working for the past three months on Sentinel. The same thing happens with Sentinel, where you select certain things, and it will create a query for you. It would be great if I could have a certain dialogue box in Splunk that uses innovative AI tools like ChatGPT, which are available now in the tech department. If a user is struggling, they can just ask an AI tool what they are trying to do with a query, and then it can suggest how a query can be written for a particular user. It can help in a way to understand the context of what the user is trying to write, which will be very helpful for ongoing operations. Even if users have zero knowledge, they can get comfortable with Splunk much more easily if an AI tool helps them write a query or search for any indexes or data models. It will be able to give more context to the user regarding how they should approach the query. This can be done using AI tools like ChatGPT, which will understand the context of what the user is trying to approve and give suggestions based on it.

It can be improved if some customers want to use Prisma Access only for web traffic. Currently, it is a bit limited. Zscaler works better for web traffic. Zscaler's agent application on your computer can configure the proxy settings automatically, whereas Palo Alto's GlobalProtect agent is only a VPN solution. You can't use it also as a secure gateway agent to force the computer to have the settings to send the data to Prisma Access. They suggest using other techniques to force the computer to use Prisma Access for a secure web gateway solution. So, Zscaler is more like a secure web gateway, and Prisma Access is more like a full VPN solution. I see the limitations of both vendors. Palo Alto needs to improve the GlobalProtect agent to work as a secure web gateway agent, not only as a VPN agent because some companies would want only a secure gateway. They wouldn't want a full VPN. So, Palo Alto has to make the VPN agent work as a secure web gateway agent for those customers who want only the secure web gateway solution. Other vendors' agents, including ForcePoint which I don't like at all, can do that. One feature that I find missing in Prisma Access, as well as Palo Alto firewalls, is that they can't insert the 644 header. I want to be able to see the IP address of the users basically. My understanding is that almost no firewall can do this. It is not only Palo Alto, but it would be good to have this feature. The only vendor that I know can insert it is FortiGate, but with them, many other things don't work.

Some of the reports that are exported through SentinelOne can be complicated for people who are not IT professionals. For example, we have some people within our leadership who would like to know why we are spending so much money on their product, and one of the ways that we are able to do that is through reports. Some of those reports are pretty easy to understand, and some of them are very complicated. Because they are not IT or security professionals, they may not have the same grasp. I wish their reporting feature was a little better. If they were able to export and make it a little more presentable, it would be great because this is something that we end up doing on our end where we take some of that data and make it look better. It would definitely save us time if it was a little prettier, for lack of a better word, from the beginning.