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Elastic Security vs NetWitness Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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

Elastic Security
Ranking in Log Management
9th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (8th)
NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
34th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
33rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.0%
NetWitness Platform0.8%
Other96.2%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
CISO at One Bank Limited
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ELK is open-source, and it will give you the framework you need to build everything from scratch."
"The intelligence of the system has been very impressive; it's pretty accurate and gives you good details to create an intelligence report and present that to your C-level management."
"My advice to anybody who is considering this product is that it is a very competitive tool that is very new in the market and the vendor is doing their best to improve services."
"Based on my experience, it's quite easy and manageable with small scale implementations, and the time to market is quite fast."
"ELK Logstash is easy and fast, at least for the initial setup with the out of box uses."
"The most valuable feature is the speed, as it responds in a very short time."
"It is very quick to react. I can set it to check anomalies or suspicious behavior every 30 seconds. It is very fast."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Security is that you can install agents, and they are not separately licensed."
"The development of use cases on the SSA console is quite user friendly. This means that the security analyst or the researcher does not have to learn another language."
"The most valuable features are the threat prediction and network forensics."
"The most valuable feature is that we can create our own connectors for any application, and NetWitness provides the training and tools to do it."
"The most valuable feature is the security that it provides."
"The most valuable feature of RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets are the alerts and correlations tools."
"Once it is deployed and you are used to it, you can do whatever you want."
"Thanks to this tool, we have a small SOC running in our company."
"This solution has a very good dashboard with a separate tab for incidents and alerts."
 

Cons

"The solution is stable if you don't touch it too much. Meaning, it's technically stable, but if there is a period of downtime, you will face quite a big hiccup in getting it running again and stabilized."
"I would like the process of retrieving archived data and viewing it in Kibana to be simplified."
"There is an area of improvement in the Logs list. The load list may need to be paginated as there are limits."
"The solution needs to be more reactive to investigations. We need to be able to detect and prevent any attacks before it can damage our infrastructure."
"Their visuals and graphs need to be better."
"An area for improvement in Elastic Security is the pricing. It could be better. Right now, when you increase the volume of logs to be collected, the price also increases a lot."
"Continuous upgrades can be quite inconvenient. My security testing team continuously reports vulnerabilities, and we have to fix and update the versions frequently."
"In terms of what could be improved with Elastic, in some use cases, especially on the advanced level, they are not ready-made, so you'll have to write some scripts."
"The implementation needs assistance."
"The system architecture is complex and sometimes it’s hard to troubleshoot potential problems."
"Nowadays, their support is a little subpar compared to other solutions. I rate RSA support six out of 10."
"It is not so easy to customize this product."
"An area for improvement would be better automation and more inbuilt use cases."
"Advance monitoring and alerting feature is not stable (Event Stream Analysis)."
"The initial setup is complex. It requires some knowledge in order to set it up."
"I am not happy with the RSA support. Sometimes they can be really annoying because it takes so long to get the support that you need."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
"When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side."
"Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution."
"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."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"The solution is free."
"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 provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."
"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"There is a licensing fee and the customer can choose whether he wishes this to be subscription-based or perpetual."
"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
"Compared to the competition, the is price is not that high."
"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."
"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
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 me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
RSA Security Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. NetWitness Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.