Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM X-Force Exchange vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

The compared IBM and Splunk solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #16 in TIPT , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 1.5% mindshare in the category. Splunk is ranked #1 in SIEM , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 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 X-Force Exchange
Read 4 IBM X-Force Exchange reviews
  • 814 Views
  • 594 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

Download the report
Executive Summary
We performed a comparison between IBM X-Force Exchange and Splunk Enterprise Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, Recorded Future, VirusTotal and others in Threat Intelligence Platforms.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE REPORT
To learn more, read our detailed Threat Intelligence Platforms Report (Updated: August 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Threat Intelligence Platforms
August 2025
Download the complete report
Helped 867,676 peers since 2012

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 X-Force Exchange
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (16th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
366
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM X-Force Exchange is designed for Threat Intelligence Platforms and holds a mindshare of 1.5%, down 2.0% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 9.3% mindshare, down 11.6% since last year.
Threat Intelligence Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM X-Force Exchange1.5%
Recorded Future14.8%
CrowdStrike Falcon8.7%
Other75.0%
Threat Intelligence Platforms
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security9.3%
Wazuh10.9%
IBM Security QRadar7.2%
Other72.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

JohnTamakloe - PeerSpot reviewer
A threat intelligence platform aiming to enhance its intelligence
It falls under the category of AI-embedded threat intelligence, which makes detection more efficient by reducing the rate of false positives and improving the overall detection rate. When the threat intelligence alone doesn’t provide enough information, we use other methods to verify the threat. For example, IBM has its threat intelligence team and tools. If the threat intelligence doesn’t yield much information, the tool has a framework that can identify suspicious activity. We then use our judgment and experience to implement compensating controls, whether for a potentially malicious patch, IP address, or any other threat. Customers benefit from it, even if they’re not directly integrating it. Through our service, they receive the benefits of the integration. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Read full review
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.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's quite integratable so you can actually integrate and get IP malware and URL information. It also gives you some form of intelligence into what you're trying to investigate or what you're trying to understand."
"This product has helped to increase staff productivity."
"The most valuable feature is you have the expertise of human experience directly involved. There is a team of experts."
"Splunk Enterprise Security gives us a single pane of glass so that we can use just one tool instead of having to use different tools."
"The solution's most valuable feature is threat intelligence correlations."
"The solution has plenty of features that are good."
"The features I find most valuable in Splunk Enterprise Security are Incident Review, Security Essentials, Asset and Identity Management, and Machine Learning Toolkit."
"The initial setup is simple, not very complex. Initial deployment takes around 10 to 15 minutes to set up the entire base for Splunk including all three tiers."
"The Splunk user community and forum are most valuable."
"Splunk allows us to customize processing and dashboards, which helps us take care of our customers' needs."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is able to process a huge amount of data without any issues."
More Splunk Enterprise Security pros
 

Cons

"You have to look for the new information from X-Force. X-Force will provide it but you have to look for it. We need clearer visibility."
"We would like to have more AI capabilities to detect threats and improve its productivity from a cybersecurity standpoint."
"I would like to see better integration with other systems, solutions, and vendors."
"The search could be improved. Now, it is a bit difficult to write search queries because they become quite long, then maintaining those long search queries is a quite challenging."
"The GUI could be improved to include some of the capabilities that other BI solutions have. The layout is a little restrictive where you can’t resize all the panels to exactly how you would like them without tweaking some XML code."
"Data retention can be better. If we want to look at the data for five months or six months, that is not available to us. We only have a history of 20 or 30 days. After that, the information gets lost. That is a drawback."
"The main issue that I have with it is that the field transformations sometimes overlap with those in Splunk Enterprise, and then you get permissions issues that lead to troubles."
"Splunk could add more ways to manage archiving and storage. There isn't a web interface. You can do this on the SaaS version, but the on-premise platform doesn't have this option. It has other things but no option for remote NAS. I would like to have a personal web interface where I can specify how long logs should be stored. To have this readily available on the web, you need to adjust some settings on the backend. That is tricky."
"While there aren't any major areas where the solution has to be improved, there are certain integrations that are still not available. I would specifically like to see legacy applications integrated."
"It is a good product, but the Achilles heel for a lot of organizations is the cost model for it because it gets expensive. That's because the model is based on how much data it processes a day, which can be prohibitive, especially if you have a lot of data. A lot of customers may not be ready for the sticker shock on how to fully leverage the product. I realized that the reason for that is that when it was originally designed, it was kind of like a big data modeling application. If they want to have a bigger customer base, they can come out with subsets of their product that are focused on specific things and have different pricing models. It may help with the cost."
"The tool itself is very difficult to configure. It's great for its number of inputs, for the different types of systems devices, and things that it could collect information from. To actually make good use of it, you need a fairly dedicated team of people that have some reasonably good programming or modeling skills to be able to do the things that you need to do with it. Whereas a lot of the other tools are better packaged for that, and so require a lot less training and a lot less dedication."
More Splunk Enterprise Security cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One of the fastest ways to cut costs is reducing staff, and this product can reduce staff by 70 percent."
"Cost is clearly a consideration, but the important thing is what we do with the data and how we protect it."
"The pricing modules could be improved."
"I remember Splunk being relatively affordable. Kibana was more reasonable, but you get more with Splunk. If I was suggesting something, I would probably suggest Splunk because it is better to pay a little bit more and get a lot more."
"The Splunk licensing is high."
"It's a little bit expensive for a small to medium enterprise."
"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."
"Unlike other security tools, Splunk provides a fixed amount of gigabytes per day, and we are required to pay for any additional usage beyond that limit, in addition to our monthly cost."
"Free Splunk license for PoCs on personal machines and the ability to scale the PoC to an enterprise level app."
"Our ROI is high."
More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice
report
See which vendors are best for you
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Threat Intelligence Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
See recommendations
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
7%
Educational Organization
6%
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 Business109
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise255
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM X-Force?
It is very expensive.
See all answers
What is your primary use case for IBM X-Force?
It's a threat intelligence platform, and we aim to enhance its intelligence by integrating additional security solutions.
See all answers
What advice do you have for others considering IBM X-Force?
It falls under the category of AI-embedded threat intelligence, which makes detection more efficient by reducing the rate of false positives and improving the overall detection rate. When the threa...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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 ...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

VirusTotal vs IBM X-Force Exchange Logo
VirusTotal vs IBM X-Force Exchange
Compared 34% of the time
Recorded Future vs IBM X-Force Exchange Logo
Recorded Future vs IBM X-Force Exchange
Compared 20% of the time
ReversingLabs vs IBM X-Force Exchange Logo
ReversingLabs vs IBM X-Force Exchange
Compared 19% of the time
IBM Security QRadar vs IBM X-Force Exchange Logo
IBM Security QRadar vs IBM X-Force Exchange
Compared 14% of the time
ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) vs IBM X-Force Exchange Logo
ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) vs IBM X-Force Exchange
Compared 13% of the time
More IBM X-Force Exchange Competitors
IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
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
Threat Intelligence Platforms
August 2025
IBM X-Force Exchange reportDownload IBM X-Force Exchange product report
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Enterprise Security
August 2025
Splunk Enterprise Security reportDownload Splunk Enterprise Security product report
 

Also Known As

X-Force Exchange, X-Force
No data available
 

Overview

IBM X-Force Exchange is a cloud-based threat intelligence sharing platform enabling users to rapidly research the latest security threats, aggregate actionable intelligence and collaborate with peers. IBM X-Force Exchange is supported by human- and machine-generated intelligence leveraging the scale of IBM X-Force.
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
Threat Intelligence Platforms
August 2025
Download Free Report
Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, Recorded Future, VirusTotal and others in Threat Intelligence Platforms. Updated: August 2025.
DOWNLOAD NOW
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all Threat Intelligence Platforms reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.