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Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs Elastic Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Change Auditor for Windows ...
Ranking in Log Management
34th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Security
Ranking in Log Management
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (16th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Change Auditor for Windows File Servers is 0.1%, down from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.1%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

KF
Provides granular queries of security logs and real-time alerting helps me mitigate risks
The real-time alerting helps me mitigate risks. For example, someone adds a member to the domain admin group. We have an alert set up, so if someone does this unexpectedly, we get notified. Then, we can check and verify if the action is legitimate or a potential threat to the environment.
SyedAli17 - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized monitoring improves security posture through rapid data processing
The processing part of Elastic Security ( /products/elastic-security-reviews ) is very interesting for us since we handle almost 7,000 to 8,000 alerts per minute. We require rapid processing speed for alerts and event data, and Elastic Security is very efficient at handling this level of data. Additionally, Elastic Security helps improve the security posture of Pakistan through centralized visibility and real-time processing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In terms of features, the querying is great."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it can be fully integrated with Microsoft solutions and it doesn't impact the productivity order."
"It's very stable and reliable."
"The visualization is very good."
"Enables monitoring of application performance and the ability to predict behaviors."
"I can look at events from more than one source across multiple different locations and find patterns or anomalies. The machine learning capabilities are helpful, and I can create rules for notifications to be more proactive rather than responding after something has gone wrong."
"Elastic Security is very easy to adapt."
"Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because of Elastic's efficient search engine."
"The indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash."
"It is scalable."
 

Cons

"The pricing could be improved. It needs to be reduced."
"The customer service and support could improve their approach to questioning issues. They tend to ask questions one at a time, which creates a lot of back-and-forth communication."
"We set up a cron job to delete old logs so that we wouldn't hit a disk space issue. Such a feature should be available in the UI, where old logs can be deleted automatically. (Don’t know if this feature is already there)."
"If the documentation were improved and made more clear for beginners, or even professionals, then we would be more attracted to this solution."
"The biggest challenge has been related to the implementation."
"Elastic Security has a steep learning curve, so it takes some time to tune it and set it up for your environment. There are some costs associated with logging things that don't have value. So you need to be cautious to only log things that make sense and keep them around for as long as you need. You shouldn't hold onto things just because you think you might need them."
"The Integration module could be improved. It is a pain to build integration with any product. We have to do parking and so on. It's not like other commercial solutions that use profile integration. I would also see more detection features on the SIEM side."
"Elastic has one problem. In the past, Elastic Security was free. Now, they currently only offer the basic license or a certain period of time."
"It would be better if Elastic Security had less storage for data. My customers do not like this. Other vendors have local support in different countries, but Elastic Security doesn't. I would like to have Operational Technology (OT) security in the next release."
"This type of monitoring is not very mature just yet. We need more real-time information in a way that's easier to manage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is per user. The cost is approximately $15/user on a yearly basis. If you need to, you can always upgrade as well."
"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."
"The price is reasonable. It probably costs the same as ArcSight and LogRhythm SIEM. FortiSIEM might cost less than Elastic Security. There are no hidden or additional costs."
"When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side."
"I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10."
"The solution is not expensive and costs around ten dollars a month."
"It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"It is easy to deploy, easy to use, and you get everything you need to become operational with it, and have nothing further to pay unless you want the OLED plugin."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?
They've already made improvements! They have a tool called IT Security Search, which lets you perform queries outside of Change Auditor. It's much faster. This is a really good addition and helps u...
What is your primary use case for Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?
I use Change Auditor for Windows File Servers to log history. It's helpful when we have critical changes in Active Directory, like adding or removing items. I use it extensively for monitoring.
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What do you like most about Elastic Security?
Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
Since Elastic Security is community-based, it does not require significant costs. This is beneficial for SMEs as they do not need extensive budgets for security solutions.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dragon Capital, Howard County MD
Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Find out what your peers are saying about Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs. Elastic Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.