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NetWitness Platform vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

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

NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
34th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
31st
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
375
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.4%, down from 10.0% 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 Security7.4%
NetWitness Platform0.8%
Other91.8%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

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 features are the packet inspection and the automated incident response."
"The most valuable features are the threat prediction and network forensics."
"It gives the capability for the incident response team to correlate logs to identify any kind of problem like malware and incidents in a general sense, both for logs and packets."
"The product has a user-friendly interface and a valuable feature for threat intelligence integration."
"Setting up NetWitness is straightforward. There are multiple connectors, including standard and specialized connectors. One purpose of the connectors is the enhanced capability integrate the custom applications. NetWitness comes with E6 appliances and application images that we use for the initial configurations and for the OS stack information. From there, you can consider the correlation rules, integrate the different log sources, and easily create correlation rules and backlog reports."
"Performance and reporting are very good."
"The most valuable feature is the hunting ability to work in a CERT."
"The most valuable features are the packet decoder, log decoder, and concentrator."
"The varied prebuilt feature is the most valuable because it ensures that we have complete coverage over all of the key questions."
"It's great for finding anonymous threats."
"Splunk Enterprise Security streamlines the creation of what they call notables, which takes a lot of the effort that we would have to put into creating our own solution off the table and does it for us."
"It is very stable. We have not had any problems."
"This is a straightforward solution, easy to configure."
"An example of how these features benefited my organization is that the mean time to detect compromised accounts from the time that we're able to detect that account and then launch some automation to actually disable the account and work with the end user to fix the issue has gone from taking a couple of days to literally taking two to three minutes."
"The ability to manage large amounts of generated data and to protect all devices from unauthorized use are the most valuable features."
"From the class that I took this week, being able to create notable events from whatever you find in the data set is pretty useful."
 

Cons

"The product's licensing models are complex to understand. This particular area needs improvement."
"Health monitoring of the event sources and devices."
"The system looks like it is a mix of a bunch of different systems, and nothing looked like it was quite together."
"There is no support for this product in this country, so problems have to be resolved through global technical teams."
"The log system is a bit complex and has room for improvement."
"The threat detection capability and centralizing and upgrading capability need to be improved. The threat alert capability needs to be improved as well because there is some lag time at present. They need to work on their database search too."
"The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms."
"They should implement algorithms to digest that data and produce additional, more advanced reporting, alerting and support of internal security teams."
"Splunk Enterprise Security can be improved by addressing the content management interface, which is very outdated, slow, and clunky; sometimes we think things are saved and they haven't."
"Splunk could have more built-in use case presets that customers can build on and customize."
"The UI could be better. This is applicable to Splunk in general. I know that a lot of people who get their hands on Splunk are hesitant to use it just because they find it overwhelming. There are a lot of options."
"The integration feature with other applications, such as anti-DDoS application Arbor, needs to be more powerful."
"I want Splunk Enterprise Security to release more AI and machine learning features in the future."
"Our two main complaints are about the difficulty of the initial setup and the licensing model."
"Most importantly, Splunk can be outrageously expensive. That is the problem with both Splunk and Sentinel. Their pricing literally explodes based on the amount of data you feed in."
"It would be nice if they had a wizard to construct searches, including more complex searches that include math or statistics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets do not have a subscription model, it's a one-time purchase. There is only a perpetual license."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"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."
"The product price was reasonable for my region and the market."
"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
"The price can always be lower, but it is fair at the moment. The cost efficiencies depend on the licensing and how much data we are bringing in. We have a fairly large footprint, so it is cost-effective."
"Splunk can be expensive, as its licensing is based on the daily data ingestion volume."
"I believe that Splunk Enterprise Security is worth the price, but it is expensive."
"The pricing could be made more competitive."
"The pricing and licensing of the product are quite high."
"Splunk is not a cheap solution and the license is billed annually."
"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is high."
"While some clients find the cost of Splunk Enterprise Security to be on the higher end, its pricing is comparable to other SIEM solutions."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
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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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise264
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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...
 

Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
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 NetWitness Platform vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,435 professionals have used our research since 2012.