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Cortex XSIAM vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
Cortex XSIAM offers significant ROI and reduced staffing needs, though some businesses await full financial assessments.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk Enterprise Security boosts efficiency, improves visibility, and increases profitability, offering flexibility, automation, and significant ROI in operations.
I have noticed a return on investment with Splunk Enterprise Security, as it delivers substantial value for money.
Splunk's cost is justified for large environments with extensive assets.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Cortex XSIAM customer support varies, with mixed reviews ranging from inadequate responses to helpful, efficient resolutions across different tiers.
Sentiment score
6.7
Splunk Enterprise Security support is generally positive, but faster resolutions often require premium options due to occasional delays.
It is ineffective in terms of responding to basic queries and addressing future requirements.
The Palo Alto support team is fully responsive and helpful.
If you want to write your own correlation rules, it is very difficult to do, and you need Splunk's support to write new correlation rules for the SIEM tool.
I have sought assistance from Splunk Enterprise Security support in the past, particularly during deployment, and they provide friendly and effective help.
The technical support for Splunk met my expectations.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Cortex XSIAM scales easily for enterprises, rated highly for scalability, despite integration reliance concerns, supporting numerous assets and users.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in scalability with smooth integration but may incur cost issues due to volume-based pricing.
Without proper integration, scaling up with more servers is meaningless.
Cortex XSIAM is highly scalable.
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
It is easy to scale.
I find it easy to scale Splunk Enterprise Security for our environment.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Cortex XSIAM is highly stable, cloud-based, and dependable, with minimal downtime, excellent reliability ratings, and rare intervention needs.
Sentiment score
7.9
Splunk Enterprise Security is reliable, robust, and adaptable, effectively managing large data volumes with minimal downtime and ease.
The product was easy to install and set up and worked right.
Overall, Cortex XSIAM is stable.
It provides a stable environment but needs to integrate with ITSM platforms to achieve better visibility.
It is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in integration, performance, usability, and support services, with enhanced automation and developer-friendliness.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs user-friendliness, pricing adjustments, and improved integration to enhance functionality and user experience.
Obtaining validation for integrations from Palo Alto takes around eight months, which is quite long.
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports.
Cortex could improve the detection and online resolution of security vulnerabilities.
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel.
Splunk Enterprise Security would benefit from a more robust rule engine to reduce false positives.
 

Setup Cost

Cortex XSIAM is competitively priced compared to Splunk and Microsoft Sentinel but involves complex licensing and additional costs.
Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is complex and costly but justified by its advanced analytics and comprehensive features.
The first impression is that XSIAM would be more expensive than others we tried.
The product is very expensive.
Cortex XSIAM is pretty expensive, and the licensing process is not very comfortable.
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
Splunk is priced higher than other solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSIAM provides advanced threat detection with machine learning, seamless third-party integration, and comprehensive network and endpoint protection.
Splunk Enterprise Security excels with robust log management, seamless integration, real-time insights, and advanced threat detection for comprehensive monitoring.
One of the valued aspects of the product is its use of artificial intelligence to detect security vulnerabilities.
The flexibility for creating manual workflows stands out.
Its signature-less subscriptions and robust detection power stand out in improving threat detection.
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
They have approximately 50,000 predefined correlation rules.
The Splunk Enterprise Security's threat-hunting capabilities have been particularly useful in later releases.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XSIAM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
17th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (7th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
306
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cortex XSIAM is 2.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.5%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

AKASH MAJUMDER - PeerSpot reviewer
Incident response times have significantly reduced with efficient device integration and log parsing capabilities
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports. Additionally, a future update request is to enable tagging of endpoints in groups, similar to a feature available in Cortex XDR. The AI analytics need fine-tuning because some use cases are not working from my side.
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.
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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
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cortex XSIAM?
It is an effective solution in terms of performance and functionalities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex XSIAM?
The licensing cost of Cortex XSIAM is more or less the same as Splunk, making it quite expensive compared to other tools. There are additional expenses for more functionalities.
What needs improvement with Cortex XSIAM?
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports. Additionally, a future update request is to enable tagging of endpoints in groups, simila...
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 asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
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 ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
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 monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 Cortex XSIAM vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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