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IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

IBM and Splunk are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. IBM is ranked #57, while Splunk is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. IBM holds a 0.4% mindshare in SIEM, compared to Splunk’s 9.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.
IBM Watson for Cyber Security
Read 4 IBM Watson for Cyber Security reviews
  • 500 Views
  • 465 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
Splunk Enterprise Security
Read 366 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews
  • 24,756 Views
  • 12,873 Comparison Views
94% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Splunk Enterprise Security and IBM Watson for Cyber Security are competing in cybersecurity analytics and threat detection. Splunk excels in real-time data indexing, a key advantage for quick searches, while IBM Watson leverages AI for in-depth threat insights.

Features: Splunk Enterprise Security offers capabilities like rapid data indexing, schema-on-read for versatile data use, and SPL (Search Processing Language) for comprehensive data manipulation. Its ability to handle both structured and unstructured data enhances its log management. IBM Watson stands out with AI-driven threat analytics that provide cognitive insights into complex threat patterns, making it valuable for identifying and responding to advanced threats. Its integration with various IBM products and threat intelligence enhances analytical capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Splunk could benefit from enhanced AI capabilities to match Watson's cognitive analytics. Improving ease of use for new users could increase its accessibility. Additionally, simplifying its complex installation process would reduce deployment time. IBM Watson might improve by streamlining its integration with non-IBM products to enhance compatibility. Reducing the learning curve associated with its AI-driven features would make it more user-friendly. Enhancing real-time data processing capabilities could match Splunk’s efficiency in immediate threat detection.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk is praised for its straightforward deployment and flexible scalability, backed by swift customer support. Its modularity makes scaling and adapting to specific needs easier. IBM Watson, while equipped with comprehensive documentation and strong support services, presents a steeper learning curve due to its advanced AI functions, requiring more time for users to fully utilize its features.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk generally incurs higher setup costs but provides a notable ROI through scalability and efficient threat detection, making it a cost-effective choice for data indexing needs. IBM Watson offers competitive pricing, with ROI driven by AI-based analytics and faster insights from cognitive computing. It is particularly justified for businesses aiming to delve into advanced AI-powered threat intelligence.

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To learn more, read our detailed IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs. Splunk Enterprise Security Report (Updated: September 2025).
Buyer's Guide
IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
September 2025
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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

IBM Watson for Cyber Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
57th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
366
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

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 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%
IBM Watson for Cyber Security0.4%
Other90.3%
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…
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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.
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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very stable."
"The customer support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Splunk Enterprise Security is the threat intelligence integration because essentially having to go out and correlate all the data on our own becomes convoluted."
"The Splunk user community and forum are most valuable."
"The most valuable function is the notable events. When I joined the team, I asked them what they could currently see, and they said nothing. I was pretty shocked. I know for a fact that they're using Enterprise Security or at least they had purchased it. I told them that there are several dashboards within Splunk that we can leverage. There is also notable events where we can see potential incidents or potential alerts about the infrastructure and the network itself."
"Splunk RBA or risk-based alerting definitely made our lives a lot easier; we went from hundreds of alerts having to be triaged a day, that generally could be false positives or just noise, and bubble them into one overall alert that we can look at on a per-day basis and see what's rising to the top and respond faster, have a higher rate of true positives and find evil a lot quicker."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the incident review, which gives a good overview of our security incidents."
"You can run reports against multiple devices at the same time. You are able to troubleshoot a single application on a thousand servers. You can do this with a single query, since it is very easy to do."
"The most valuable feature is the custom dashboard feature."
"The alerts are very effective."
More Splunk Enterprise Security pros
 

Cons

"The dashboard could improve in IBM Watson for Cyber Security."
"In the future, I would like to see threat intelligence included."
"They need to continue to build the AI capabilities."
"This is an expensive product, so making it more cost-effective would be an improvement."
"Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power. When we execute heavy, resource-intensive queries over long periods, the performance dips."
"Splunk Enterprise Security would benefit from a more robust rule engine to reduce false positives."
"Some of the search functions can be better. There has been a lot of talk at the conference about the update of SPL before each iteration. That will be a lot of help."
"We've sometimes faced issues with upgrades. The incident review dashboard sometimes breaks after updates. When we add a space or something in the description or anywhere in the SQL, the drill-down value may be reset with a blank value. Before rolling out any software, they should test it thoroughly and ensure clients won't have issues with the upgraded version. It should be compatible with all or most of the apps. All major issues must be addressed before rolling out the upgrade."
"The integration feature with other applications, such as anti-DDoS application Arbor, needs to be more powerful."
"This is not really a monitoring solution."
"The prices are complicated as we operate in a small third-world country."
"Both quality and speed are lacking. Quality-wise, tickets sometimes go in circles, with unnecessary complications and escalations requiring repeated explanations."
More Splunk Enterprise Security cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution should be lower, although I understand why IBM charges a premium price."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very simple to license and is priced well."
"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."
"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is reasonable, falling somewhere in the middle range."
"Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
"Pricing is probably its weakest spot. As compared to some competitors, Splunk is really expensive."
"While Splunk is more expensive than other solutions, we would still choose it because of its capabilities."
"While licensing can be a concern, there are ways to reduce the licensing costs including filtering some events."
"My customers have found the price of the solution to be high."
"The pricing of Splunk Enterprise Security is somewhat high, but comparing it with its benefits, it's acceptable. It depends on the type of business."
More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice
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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…
Read full review
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

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

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
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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 ...
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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...
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Comparisons

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Compared 30% of the time
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IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 8% of the time
Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 7% of the time
Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 7% of the time
Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 5% of the time
Security Onion vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
Security Onion vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 4% of the time
More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
August 2025
IBM Watson for Cyber Security reportDownload IBM Watson for Cyber Security product report
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Enterprise Security
August 2025
Splunk Enterprise Security reportDownload Splunk Enterprise Security product report
 

Overview

Watson for cyber security can draw security intelligence from millions of security blogs, online forums and white papers - so you can see threats unseen by other systems.
IBM

Splunk Enterprise Security delivers powerful log management, rapid searches, and intuitive dashboards, enhancing real-time analytics and security measures. Its advanced machine learning and wide system compatibility streamline threat detection and incident response across diverse IT environments.

Splunk Enterprise Security stands out in security operations with robust features like comprehensive threat intelligence and seamless data integration. Its real-time analytics and customizable queries enable proactive threat analysis and efficient incident response. Integration with multiple third-party feeds allows detailed threat correlation and streamlined data visualization. Users find the intuitive UI and broad compatibility support efficient threat detection while reducing false positives. Despite its strengths, areas such as visualization capabilities and integration processes with cloud environments need enhancement. Users face a high learning curve, and improvements in automation, AI, documentation, and training are desired to maximize its potential.

What Are the Key Features of Splunk Enterprise Security?
  • Log Management: Efficiently manages and organizes a vast amount of logs for better data handling.
  • Rapid Data Search: Quickly retrieves relevant data for fast decision-making.
  • Flexible Dashboards: Customizable dashboards provide clear data visualization.
  • Comprehensive Threat Intelligence: Offers detailed insights to preemptively defend against threats.
  • Real-Time Analytics: Analyzes data in real-time to enhance response times.
  • Integration with Third-Party Feeds: Streamlines information flow from multiple sources.
What Benefits Should Users Investigate in Reviews?
  • Efficient Incident Response: Enhances the ability to respond promptly to threats.
  • False Positive Reduction: Minimizes incorrect threat alarms, making monitoring more efficient.
  • Threat Detection Speed: Accelerates the identification and evaluation of security threats.
  • Cost-Effectiveness: Potential savings through better licensing options and operational efficiency.
  • User Adaptability: Enhancements in documentation and training resources aid in overcoming the learning curve.

In specific industries like finance and healthcare, Splunk Enterprise Security is instrumental for log aggregation, SIEM functionalities, and compliance monitoring. Companies leverage its capabilities for proactive threat analysis and response, ensuring comprehensive security monitoring and integration with various tools for heightened operational intelligence.

Splunk
 

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.
Buyer's Guide
IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
September 2025
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