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IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs LogRhythm SIEM 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 September 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Watson for Cyber Security is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LogRhythm SIEM is 3.1%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.3%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security9.3%
LogRhythm SIEM3.1%
IBM Watson for Cyber Security0.4%
Other87.2%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Elena Stefanovska - PeerSpot reviewer
Knowledgeable support, reliable, and useful compliance policies
IBM Watson for Cyber Security can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud and it is used as a SIEM solution The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add…
SumitKumar20 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tool consistently aids in effective threat detection and monitoring but could benefit from improved log source management and resource optimization
One major area for improvement in LogRhythm SIEM is the lack of volume measurement capability in terms of storage. There is currently no way to determine how much data is being consumed in terms of gigabytes, terabytes, or petabytes from particular devices or environments. This information is crucial for planning future storage needs and scalability. The system monitor (collector) agent has issues with resource consumption. Even when not actively collecting data, the agent continues to consume significant CPU and memory resources, which can be particularly problematic for small business environments with limited resources. LogRhythm SIEM could improve by adding more default device support. While they have good default settings for devices such as Palo Alto firewalls, custom log sources often require extensive work. Increasing the number of supported devices with built-in policies and functionality would reduce the need for custom work. Competitive SIEM tools often provide more comprehensive coverage for various devices and vendors.
Kyle Vernham - PeerSpot reviewer
Built-in searches and unified data access streamline alert investigation and boosts analyst efficiency
The two features I appreciate the most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the built-in searches, which have been very easy for us to get started with right out of the box, and the fact that it accesses all of our other systems. You can access it as a pane of glass rather than having to search individually. We also have the option to compare our analysts from our service to service. Splunk Enterprise Security helps our SOC team prioritize and investigate high-fidelity alerts more effectively by providing a more in-depth look and the ability to access a lot more of our data. Instead of jumping from several segmented systems, it allows us to have everything brought together in one place. For example, you have to move from our purview to our build system and to Splunk Enterprise Security, and it enables us to streamline that process. The built-in features of Splunk Enterprise Security, which we recently procured, have given us a good starting point and demonstrated the value of the product, providing an easy way to sell it to our company. The ease of getting everything into our purview helps us, and it serves as a good start for the investigation part in one location rather than what we usually have, which is jumping from system to system to system. Splunk Enterprise Security plays a role in our company's strategy to combat insider threats and advanced persistent threats by currently being in its technical test phase. We are still rolling it out, and it should help us find any insider threats based on information that our policy states should not be present in our system. Splunk Enterprise Security's risk-based alerting (RBA) has impacted our alert volume and analyst productivity because we've got many different systems feeding into it. However, it has helped to make it easier for our analysts to go through a set of events rather than 100 alerts. RBA allows us to streamline the process and customize it for our analysts. When it comes to leveraging Splunk Enterprise Security's dashboards and visualizations to communicate security posture to executives, it's pretty straightforward for any type of information. The visualization is easy to understand, but I haven't had any direct conversations with our executives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The customer support is very good."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very stable."
"The most valuable feature of this product is innovation, where the research and upgrading of technology never ends."
"The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add them in the next release."
"It gives us insight into our entire installation, where we are multiple sites, going as far as the East Coast to the Central West Coast."
"The major feature of this solution is its easy configuration which helps different team members to work on it effectively. This kind of feature is not available in other solutions because of a request for specialised schemes for configuration report extraction and searching. Another feature that I really admire is the significant improvement in the compliance in the auditing process by the solution. Our organisation-specific complaints require where the mailbox data needs to be forwarded, stored and searchable for a certain time period. This solution categorises data based on different types, which include cold, warm and hot data. These features allow faster and easier extraction of any data even if the event was occurring several years ago. I also like other features, especially user behaviour analysis and automation. If suddenly someone accesses your side or an unusual traffic is recorded from a user the solution flags it very effectively."
"The artificial intelligence engine."
"We raise a ticket to LogRhythm, and they will give us their support."
"LogRhythm SIEM's automated response capabilities help organizations mitigate threats through alerts based on specific use cases and monitoring requirements."
"NextGen SIEM's most valuable feature is its user-friendliness."
"We now have a central point of monitoring for all potential threats."
"One of the main features that I like about LogRhythm NextGen SIEM is that there are a lot of pre-built pieces. Like with our AV, we didn't have to tell it how to read the logs; they already had it pre-made. So, we essentially just had to follow their guide to get the logs imported in and set up some rules for it. We've only had to manually create the parsing rules for a few of our vendors so that we could interpret the logs correctly. Most of them had already been pre-created for us."
"We can extract the metrics we want on the dashboards. We are able to react to the incidents."
"There are lots of free learning materials on their website."
"Integrity with many vendors: This simplifies the implementation and integration with different devices"
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the dashboard. It's very intuitive."
"Compared to IBM QRadar, Splunk Enterprise Security offers faster alert resolution."
"Splunk UBA is useful for fraud detection and for detection of APTs, advanced persistent threats."
"The connections to the database are very good and updating the data files is simple to do. The dashboards are useful and user-friendly."
"I really like the user interface and how it works."
 

Cons

"They need to continue to build the AI capabilities."
"This is an expensive product, so making it more cost-effective would be an improvement."
"In the future, I would like to see threat intelligence included."
"The dashboard could improve in IBM Watson for Cyber Security."
"My biggest complaint is documentation. Everyone tells me, "We have documentation on the Community site." I have searched for different types of documentation on numerous occasions, and it might be there, but it's not easily findable."
"I would like to see more integration with more products that are out there within the same security field."
"There is room for improvement with separate running sources or better integration."
"The solution is likely not the best option for a smaller organization."
"I have Windows administrators who will remove the agent when they think that that's what's fouling up their upgrade or their install or their reconfiguration, etc. The first thing they do is to turn off the antivirus, turn down the firewall, and take off anything else. They don't realize that the LogRhythm agent is just sitting there monitoring. Most antivirus products have application protection features built-in where, if I'm an admin on a box, I can't uninstall antivirus. I need to have to the antivirus admin password to do that."
"There are other security technologies outside of this SIEM that should be inside of this SIEM. I can see in their roadmap that they're trying to address a lot of these things, and have these technologies built into the solution, because there is no point in going to another vendor or opening up a second window to obtain the data that you need."
"One area for improvement in LogRhythm NextGen SIEM is that it's a Windows-based tool, and I feel it should be on the Linux operating system instead. Another area for improvement in the tool is the UI. There should be minor changes in the UI to make it better, though I like the dashboards in LogRhythm NextGen SIEM."
"I would really love to be able to take some of the data and not have to export it to a CSV file, so I can pull it into Excel to turn it into some other kind of graph."
"The product could be cheaper."
"I've never had too many issues with the stability. Years ago we had indexes crash but that was more on us. We didn't understand how to properly size Splunk."
"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."
"I find the process for customizing, developing, testing, deploying, and refining detections in Splunk Enterprise Security to be cumbersome."
"When files are absent, troubleshooting becomes difficult, and performance issues inevitably arise."
"I love the solution, but I would like to see more accessibility to the machine-learning capabilities that are sprinkled around Splunk."
"Our two main complaints are about the difficulty of the initial setup and the licensing model."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is complicated in terms of developing specific cybersecurity use cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very simple to license and is priced well."
"The price of this solution should be lower, although I understand why IBM charges a premium price."
"It is a very cost-effective solution."
"I have seen a measurable decrease in the mean time to detect and respond to threats. We went from not detecting them to detecting them. We can actually pick up what is anomalous in our network now."
"The nice thing about LogRhythm is you can either use the agents, getting a certain number of agents with your license depending on how you want to go, and those agents do a lot of cool things, or you can use CIS Log host, then you have like an unlimited number of them."
"I would rate the tool's pricing around eight out of ten."
"On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate the pricing of this solution as a seven - not too expensive but not cheap either. Regarding licensing costs, it varies depending on factors like being a partner or an end user, but there are no additional costs aside from standard licensing fees for the basic SIEM solution."
"The license cost is around $10 per MPS."
"I would rate the pricing 4 out of 5. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"I would recommend talking to the rep. That's the biggest thing because they will know what questions to ask."
"This product could use better pricing in general."
"I think that most of the log analytics solutions are expensive and I'm not sure if it's worth it."
"We have seen ROI and improvements as we have continued to use the product, but they are more reactive."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is an expensive solution."
"I am fine with the licensing, but in terms of the cost, it is expensive for the data that we have. We have an open discussion with our account rep about this."
"It is quite expensive."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is not at all cost-friendly to be deployed in very small enterprises like start-ups."
"Expensive compared to other options."
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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
No data available
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise83
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise255
 

Questions from the Community

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What is the difference between log management and SIEM?
Rony, Daniel's answer is right on the money. There are many solutions for each in the market, a lot depends upon you...
What needs improvement with LogRhythm NextGen SIEM?
One major area for improvement in LogRhythm SIEM is the lack of volume measurement capability in terms of storage. Th...
What do you like most about LogRhythm SIEM?
I find LogRhythm's log management capabilities to be beneficial.
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

No data available
LogRhythm NextGen SIEM, LogRhythm, LogRhythm Threat Lifecycle Management, LogRhythm TLM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Macy's, NASA, Fujitsu, US Air Force, EY, Abbott, HD Supply, SAB Miller, UCLA, Raytheon, Amtrak, Cargill
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: September 2025.
867,826 professionals have used our research since 2012.