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NetWitness Platform vs OpenText Enterprise Security Manager vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Enterprise Security Manager is 1.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.4%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.
Gaurav Ranade - PeerSpot reviewer
Excels at performing regression and correlation on the data
ArcSight is a legacy technology, and many customers want AI-powered technologies integrated with it. That hasn't been done yet, but ArcSight needs to catch up with the newer solutions and technologies available in the market. It can't just rely on the legacy technology from 2010 or 2012. You can't run that in 2024. It's a legacy technology with its own limitations. Customers often face issues that other software or newer solutions can resolve easily. That's the main challenge we face from customers right now. So, the only concerns are that AI needs to be integrated and scalability improved. Those are the main areas to be improved.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Offers a good wireless feature."
"NetWitness can be highly beneficial for incident detection and response."
"The packet capture aspect of it is a valuable feature because it is quite different from a traditional SIEM solution that only carries out investigations based on captured logs."
"The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult."
"Possibility to investigate incidents based on logs and raw packets, such as extracting files sent over the network"
"It's fully scalable. There is no limit. Of course, the license limits per day the number of terabytes. In my opinion, it's very flexible."
"The product has a user-friendly interface and a valuable feature for threat intelligence integration."
"The software is scalable to whatever is required, and you can also put a lot of resources in the cloud."
"It has absolutely improved the efficiency of our security team. We use it internally as well. It is such a powerful tool that our internal security team became a customer of our ArcSight managed service."
"​It is a vital tool for live monitoring and helps us to understand the traffic alerts of any major issue on the network, thereby reducing hacking attempts."
"The real-time analysis adds value."
"I would rate the ease of use for new users an eight out of ten, with ten being easy to use. It is a good tool."
"The most valuable features of ArcSight ESM are ease of use and readily usable components."
"For the typical malware or intrusion, this solution assists us by identifying the symptoms based on network traffic from the application servers."
"ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) works perfectly. It's a stable and scalable product."
"The tool sends an automated mail to all the operators, which makes it easy to share the information and reporting.​"
"It has a drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to know SQL or Java to construct a query on Splunk. The resolution time is about the same, but it took longer to discover the issue with ArcSight. Our previous solution took about an hour or more, but Splunk can do it within a few minutes or an hour at most."
"I can create dashboards to collect and view information in a tabular, graphical format. This feature is important because it helps me understand time-series data over one or two hours."
"Splunk UBA is useful for fraud detection and for detection of APTs, advanced persistent threats."
"It is a very stable solution. I never really had a hiccup with the tool."
"It is lovely to have everything we need in one tool. Everything is quite centralized."
"You can use it to gather syslog messages from anything."
"Splunk can deliver more information by going deeper. By creating a dashboard, we can identify the root cause of the threat. Let's say I have a firewall from Check Point. Splunk will find the dashboard for Check Point, implement it in our environment, and connect it to the Check Point firewall logs, which are shown on the dashboard. If we request a custom dashboard, the engineer will take longer to complete the task."
"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."
 

Cons

"I believe that integrating the solution with other products such as Oracle would be beneficial."
"The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms."
"The initial setup is complex. There are other solutions that are easier to implement."
"The initial setup is very complex and should be simplified."
"It is not so easy to customize this product."
"Lots of competing products have vulnerability protection built into their products, and this solution would be improved by including that support."
"The documentation is not as structured as I would like, personally, and I think that it can be improved and made much more user-friendly."
"The system looks like it is a mix of a bunch of different systems, and nothing looked like it was quite together."
"Micro Focus does not have a physical presence here in Pakistan, although IBM does."
"ArcSight ESM could improve the alerts for the storage capacities or actions."
"The customer experience could be improved."
"It would be nice if the interface were more user-friendly, with, for example, a minimal number of tabs to navigate."
"The initial setup is very complex. We had to architect a deployment which allowed us to incorporate an ever growing number of customers into our hosted instance of ArcSight."
"The correlation engine effectively connects different events, significantly improving our detection reach. However, limitations exist with non-default alerts, where additional costs arise for integration."
"The centralized dashboard for the hybrid cloud environment needs to be more focused. It needs to be redefined because it's missing most of the information. It should be a little bit easy to use. Currently, integration with various applications and connectors is not that easy. Deployment is easy, but integration is not that easy. ArcSight also has a very high bandwidth consumption to pull the local servers. It should have some kind of better process or ability to transfer files from on-premises to the cloud, from the cloud to on-premises, and from a cloud to another cloud."
"​In certain cases, this product does have false positives, which the company should work on."
"I would like to see more SIEM functionality and a better ticket tool."
"It currently has limited default rules and customizations. If they can concentrate more on the compliance part and the security information part, it would be helpful. The platform part is good, but it requires many features from the security aspect."
"Its interface could be improved."
"The initial setup is complex, but this is necessary. We needed to take into consideration how to direct log files from thousands of machines to Splunk, and how to ingest those files."
"Make it easier to include roles and user controls, as it is horrible now."
"Writing queries is a bit complicated sometimes."
"Its interface and usability can always be improved."
"The AWS add-on is particularly problematic, with most inputs requiring manual writing due to lack of out-of-box functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."
"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
"There is a licensing fee and the customer can choose whether he wishes this to be subscription-based or perpetual."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"The product price was reasonable for my region and the market."
"It is cheap."
"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
"Price-wise, ArcSight ESM was a bit high compared to competitors, which factored into our decision to switch to Splunk. It couldn't cover all our business needs for what we wanted to implement."
"We have a license to use this solution. The price of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager is expensive."
"HPE ArcSight pricing might be more expensive than other SIEM solutions, but in my opinion it has powerful features and great flexibility in developing complex use cases."
"It's a good price, it's one of the cheaper solutions."
"The pricing is great compared to others."
"Customers without a ton of resources to dedicate to deployment may be better served by a managed ArcSight service."
"The pricing model is expensive compared to open-source alternatives."
"ArcSight can be a little bit expensive because of the area that we work in and the cost. Licensing is mostly on a yearly basis, not monthly."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is an expensive solution."
"It would be nice if the pricing were cheaper. However, we did purchase it."
"Pricing and licensing are quite high compared to other tools or SIEM tools, but the features justify it."
"Splunk has always been on the expensive side."
"It is a bit costly."
"It is possible to use a developer's license, which is up to 10GB per day of volume traffic, which is usually enough for most use cases."
"While Splunk is more expensive than other solutions, we would still choose it because of its capabilities."
"Splunk is definitely not a cheap solution. It is an expensive product."
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to...
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem )...
Which is the best SIEM tool for a mid-sized financial services firm: Arcsight or Securonix?
In my market, a lot of financial companies had or have an ArcSight installation. Just because in former times it was ...
What do you like most about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
We utilize ArcSight ESM for real-time threat detection in our organization. We have custom rules that we've developed...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is very cheap compared to other tools. It is worth the investment if you a...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is a...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingest...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitor...
 

Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics
Micro Focus ArcSight, HPE ArcSight, ArcSight
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Lake Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bank AlJazira, Banca Intesa, and Obrela.
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk, Wazuh, Microsoft and others in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). Updated: August 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.