Amazon CloudWatch and Elastic Security both excel in the realm of monitoring and security solutions. CloudWatch integrates seamlessly within the AWS ecosystem, making it a top contender for AWS users, while Elastic Security stands out for its superior threat detection and machine learning capabilities.
Features: Amazon CloudWatch provides comprehensive system metrics, real-time alerts, and insights into logs and KPIs. It offers performance metrics aggregation and is excellent in monitoring AWS infrastructure and services. Elastic Security offers robust threat detection, machine learning capabilities, and utilizes Kibana for visualization. It excels in data handling and customization, making it suitable for complex environments.
Room for Improvement: Amazon CloudWatch requires better dashboard customization and integration with non-AWS products. Users face challenges in setting it up for non-native services and note high developer effort for some functionalities. Elastic Security needs an improved user experience, particularly in advanced configurations and integrations. More AI features and prebuilt use cases would enhance its offering.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon CloudWatch is easily scalable within AWS public cloud environments but requires extensive configurations for hybrid setups. Its technical support depends on the package, with premium support providing faster resolution. Elastic Security offers versatility across hybrid and on-premises environments but has a steeper learning curve, with limited official support due to its open-source nature.
Pricing and ROI: Amazon CloudWatch operates on a pay-as-you-go model, making it cost-efficient for cloud-native monitoring, though costs can increase with usage. It often delivers a clear ROI through reduced staffing needs and efficient resource management. Elastic Security is cost-effective due to its open-source foundation, reducing licensing fees, though enterprises may face additional costs for premium features. Its ROI is seen in improved security and reduced threat impact.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
It does not require hefty security budgets and can be deployed for enterprise security effectively.
While using their cloud and cloud resources, if you have an issue with CloudWatch, you must pay additional monthly fees to get time from dedicated tech support.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
Most of the time when my team encounters issues, they receive responses within 24 hours.
Support is prompt and helpful.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
It allows us to think about specific use cases, such as gathering malicious IPs in a single view and analyzing threats based on geolocation.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
In terms of stability, I would rate Elastic a solid eight out of ten.
When using third-party dashboards such as Kibana or Grafana and other visualization tools, there should be a way to feed CloudWatch's data and logging capabilities into these visualization tools.
Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage.
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
CrowdStrike and Defender have more established threat intelligence integration due to having a larger client base.
My security testing team continuously reports vulnerabilities, and we have to fix and update the versions frequently.
Elastic Security consumes a lot of resources, requiring a substantial deployment setup.
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
The pricing is reasonable, especially for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), making it a viable option for businesses building their security infrastructure.
This is beneficial for SMEs as they do not need extensive budgets for security solutions.
Elastic Security is considered cost-effective, especially at lower EPS levels.
Being an inbuilt solution from AWS, it saves time on installation, setup, and maintenance.
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
The best features of Amazon CloudWatch need to improve visibility into the network because when using hundreds of network resources such as transit gateway, VPNs, routers, route tables, and firewalls, it does not give many details in a structured manner.
Elastic Security offers good insight regarding alerts, reports, and cases.
Elastic Security offers advanced features such as machine learning and integration with ChatGPT.
We require rapid processing speed for alerts and event data, and Elastic Security is very efficient at handling this level of data.
Amazon CloudWatch is used for monitoring, tracking logs, and organizing metrics across AWS services. It detects anomalies, sets dynamic alarms, and automates actions to optimize cloud utilization, troubleshoot, and ensure service availability.
Organizations leverage Amazon CloudWatch for collecting and analyzing logs, triggering alerts, and profiling application performance. It's also employed for monitoring bandwidth, virtual machines, Lambda functions, and Kubernetes clusters. Valuable features include seamless integration with AWS, real-time data and alerts, detailed metrics, and a user-friendly interface. It provides robust monitoring capabilities for infrastructure and application performance, log aggregation, and analytics. Users appreciate its scalability, ease of setup, and affordability. Additional key aspects are the ability to create alarms, dashboards, and automated responses, along with detailed insights into system and application health. Room for improvement includes dashboards and UI enhancements for better visualization and customizability, log streaming speed, advanced machine learning and reporting capabilities, pricing, and integration with non-AWS services and databases. Users also seek more real-time monitoring and comprehensive application performance features, and simpler alerts and configuration processes.
What are the most important features?
What benefits and ROI can users expect?
Amazon CloudWatch is implemented across a range of industries, including technology, finance, healthcare, and retail. Technology firms use it to monitor application performance and traffic, while financial organizations leverage it for ensuring compliance and system reliability. Healthcare entities rely on it for maintaining service availability and monitoring data flow, and retail companies utilize it for tracking customer interactions and optimizing server usage.
Elastic Security combines the features of a security information and event management (SIEM) system with endpoint protection, allowing organizations to detect, investigate, and respond to threats in real time. This unified approach helps reduce complexity and improve the efficiency of security operations.
Additional offerings and benefits:
Finally, Elastic Security benefits from a global community of users who contribute to its threat intelligence, helping to enhance its detection capabilities. This collaborative approach ensures that the solution remains on the cutting edge of cybersecurity, with up-to-date information on the latest threats and vulnerabilities.
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