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

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs Splunk SOAR vs VMware Carbon Black Endpoint 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR enhances ROI through automation, integration, and efficient mature SOC processes, reducing investigation time.
Sentiment score
6.6
Adoption of Splunk SOAR varied, with customization enhancing benefits; successful integration linked to experience, despite initial challenges.
Sentiment score
7.1
Users reported significant ROI with VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, citing reduced malware and ransomware incidents, and 10% cost savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR support is knowledgeable but varies in response times and service quality, needing possible improvements.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk SOAR support is generally responsive, yet telecom and IoT cases may face delays; community offers quicker resolutions.
Sentiment score
6.4
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint support is generally praised as effective and knowledgeable, but some report delays and issues with tiered support.
Their support has been better than Anomali's and they are more responsive.
Splunk's technical support is very good and generally not needed often due to the stable environment.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is scalable, integrating well with APIs, though large deployments may face challenges and latency issues.
Sentiment score
7.1
Splunk SOAR is highly scalable and flexible, though some users encounter minor challenges, mainly linked to internal management.
Sentiment score
7.5
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is highly scalable and adaptable for various enterprises, praised for ease of adding tenants and managing environments.
The scalability of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR supports our growth and security needs because we can integrate various tools and continuously add more capability.
It can be extended and adapted as necessary.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is stable and reliable, though minor bugs occur during updates and with oversized storage environments.
Sentiment score
7.5
Splunk SOAR is stable, reliable, with minimal downtime and effective version control, despite occasional external vendor issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is stable, lightweight, reliable, and highly rated, though minor issues with sensors and updates occasionally occur.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSOAR requires easier setup, better IoT support, improved UI, more connectors, flexible pricing, and enhanced documentation.
Splunk SOAR users desire better integration, user interface, documentation, and features like automation, debugging, and reporting for improved operations.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint struggles with mobile support, complex UI, performance issues, inadequate reporting, and insufficient third-party integration.
The deployment requires integration and the development of integration modules.
One of the significant issues we encounter is system slowdown when we receive an influx of alerts, which inhibits how quickly we can access the information needed for investigation.
Although it enhances alert handling, it still has a journey to compete with Palo Alto SOAR and FortiSOAR.
To make Splunk SOAR a better solution, there could be better built-in debugging tools, smarter playbook suggestions, and enhanced lifecycle management.
 

Setup Cost

Cortex XSOAR is seen as expensive yet valuable for security, with variable pricing and discounts post-Palo Alto acquisition.
Splunk SOAR's pricing is consumption-based, often deemed expensive, with costs varying by data volume and region, impacting smaller organizations.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint licensing is seen as expensive and inflexible, with prices ranging from $15 to $7,000 per node.
Splunk SOAR is moderately priced, neither cheap nor overly expensive.
Splunk SOAR is affordable cost-wise only.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSOAR offers user-friendly automation, integration, and playbook creation with efficient remediation, security features, and AI-enhanced threat intelligence.
Splunk SOAR enhances threat response with automation, integration, customization, and user-friendly features, streamlining workflows and reducing manual tasks.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint offers robust remote security with intuitive real-time detection, AI-driven threat response, and centralized cloud control.
If I already have an established process, I do not have to change my process to fit into the tool. I can modify the tool to fit into my process, which makes things considerably easier.
Execution of automatic tasks for collecting, enriching, and correlating security events from hundreds of different technologies.
Creating playbooks using the Playbook Editor in Splunk SOAR is easy. The editor is designed to be user-friendly with visual drag and drop features, allowing for easy workflows without writing any code.
The stable environment and the community provide strong support, reducing the need for technical support.
 

Mindshare comparison

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilSharma2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ability to multiple playbooks to fetch data from multiple firewalls and utomated several tasks, including vulnerability scans and SOCL (Security Orchestration, Automation
Recently, they started implementing microservices in XSOAR, which has improved quality and addressed previous issues. However, they should focus more on licensing costs. The user licensing fees are quite high. For example, I received a quote for XSOAR, and it was $12,000 per user per year. If you have a SOC team of 30 members/analysts, you're looking at a substantial expense. They should consider reducing these costs since this high pricing seems to be more about profit. So, there is room for improvement in the pricing. Moreover, the reporting and dashboard features are decent but could be improved. The user interface (UI) is quite heavy and takes time to load, which is a major drawback.
Shubham Sinha. - PeerSpot reviewer
Helped eliminate repetitive and redundant tasks, but custom functions and reporting need a lot of work
The visibility of the solution’s playbook viewer depends on the right you assign to the analyst. SOAR has the flexibility to distinguish between the roles of analyst and owner. If the analyst's role is to just work on a ticket, they cannot view the playbook design platform. That is limited to the owner. That can be both a good and bad thing. A major problem I have faced in SOAR's rights distribution is roles and responsibilities. Suppose I am initially granted user rights or analyst rights, but later on, I also get admin rights. SOAR is unable to amend the limitations of my role. I raised a support ticket with Splunk about this. They said it's a bug in their 5.3.5 version. To fix this, I had to reinstall the entire platform from scratch, just to amend the rights and responsibilities of one role. This bug was not fixed. Also, the latest GUI is terrible. The previous one was better. Another point is that while using Splunk SOAR in an investigation is not difficult, there are some complex parameters. We have SOAR case management, but the licensing is going to put a big hole in your pocket. Also, there is an issue with investigation node addition. When you are doing node additions you cannot grant the entire environment to have SOAR visibility into the incident. So when you integrate it with an ITSM tool, like ServiceNow or Jira for ticketing purposes, there is a challenge. When you do nodes for investigation on a regular basis, sometimes it does not update our ServiceNow platform, which is terrible. It is a redundant activity for an analyst to update that in the case management as well as in the ITSM tool. Although SOAR provides integration, the functionality of investigation and nodes is terrible when it comes to integration. An additional area for improvement is custom function creation. It's terrible. A newbie cannot create custom functions right away. They would require a solid understanding first. Also, the reporting is really awful. If I want to do a report for a customized time period, such as the last three days or the last four days, or from the 10th to the 12th of June, that is not available in SOAR at all. That kind of feature is available in Cortex XSOAR. Reporting is a real challenge.
Nikunj Kamboj - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates well with our existing SIEM tool and helps in identifying suspicious activities
The solution's integration with our existing security infrastructure is good. Whenever we have any alert in VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, we can easily that alert in our SIEM tool and check logs from the SIEM tool itself. VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is just a secondary security tool for us, and we are just monitoring the alerts from it. The solution's behavioral analytics feature helps in identifying suspicious activities pretty well. Whenever we have even a small thing, we get an alert. The solution is deployed on the cloud in our organization. Performance-wise, the solution is doing great in terms of connecting to the host directly. Performing a malware scan usually takes a lot of time, more than 24 hours. A malware scan is something that we do only on Carbon Black for the old endpoint devices and servers. It used to take sometimes three days to perform. I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solutions are best for your needs.
851,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
Even though customers often comment on the price, the potential savings come from managing a large number of security...
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
The complexity of Cortex XSOAR has a trade-off with its versatility. The product can be tailored for each deployment ...
What do you like most about Splunk Phantom?
Splunk SOAR's quick response to incidents is the most valuable part.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Phantom?
Splunk SOAR is moderately priced, neither cheap nor overly expensive.
What needs improvement with Splunk Phantom?
There are areas in Splunk SOAR that have room for improvement. To make Splunk SOAR a better solution, there could be ...
What to choose: an endpoint antivirus, an EDR solution or both?
I can recommend Carbon Black, an award-winning next-gen anti-virus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) s...
What's the difference between Carbon Black CB Response and Carbon Black CB Defense?
Carbon Black offers two different levels of Endpoint Detection and Response. One is the VM Carbon Black Cloud Endpoin...
What do you like most about Carbon Black CB Defense?
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is a highly stable solution.
 

Also Known As

Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
Phantom
Carbon Black CB Defense, Bit9, Confer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
Recorded Future, Blackstone
Netflix, Progress Residential, Indeed, Hologic, Gentle Giant, Samsung Research America
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Splunk and others in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR). Updated: April 2025.
851,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.