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Splunk Security Essentials vs VMware Carbon Black Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 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

Splunk Security Essentials
Ranking in Security Incident Response
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (14th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (14th)
VMware Carbon Black Cloud
Ranking in Security Incident Response
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (57th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Security Incident Response category, the mindshare of Splunk Security Essentials is 2.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Cloud is 9.2%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Incident Response Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Carbon Black Cloud9.2%
Splunk Security Essentials2.7%
Other88.1%
Security Incident Response
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2836941 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Centralized monitoring has given our SOC real-time visibility into security and application activity
When I first implemented Splunk Security Essentials in this environment, it took a week for each log source to onboard and to create use cases and implement the data model, CIM, etc., for production readiness. Training is mandatory, and we need at least the Splunk Security Essentials User certification because it is a very critical resource in the organization, as we are handling security logs. In my organization, Splunk Security Essentials is used not only by the SOC but also for monitoring logs across different teams, as it is important for handling both security and application logs, given its capability to manage unstructured logs. Splunk Security Essentials has dramatically impacted my organization, as without it, we were blind to what is happening from both a security and application perspective, and it provides vital visibility into the organization's operations.
reviewer2771742 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sec consultant at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Has supported consistent deployment across departments but needs better OS compatibility and detection performance
I am not really looking for a new solution, actually, I was preparing for an interview and wanted to have a comparison between both tools. I have not worked with any of these products before, but we had a training demonstration yesterday with Dynatrace, and I have investigated the Wiz solution better. In terms of experience, it will be my first time with CDR. I am working with something for EDR, specifically, we have an EDR, it's VMware Carbon Black Cloud. They have a hybrid environment, both on-prem and cloud. I would usually recommend this product for big companies, because it's not cheap, so only big companies would I expect to pay for that. The review rating for VMware Carbon Black Cloud is 6 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would have to rate Splunk Security Essentials a 10 out of 10 because it's free and there's tons of usable content."
"Splunk Security Essentials has dramatically impacted my organization, as without it, we were blind to what is happening from both a security and application perspective, and it provides vital visibility into the organization's operations."
"The network monitoring feature is particularly valuable for gathering information about users, login times, and other statistics."
"We are focusing on security to ensure incidents are reported efficiently. In addition to that, for reporting purposes, we are utilizing our dashboards or creating new ones. We will be using free visualization tools for this purpose."
"They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks."
"Splunk Security Essentials has impacted my organization in that we have been getting the results that we wanted."
"Carbon Black insures the probability that any ransomware will be stopped before spreading."
"The detection response and quarantining are very good features."
"I would usually recommend this product for big companies, because it's not cheap, so only big companies would I expect to pay for that."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to seek out abnormal activity and to create alerts."
"The most valuable features are the threat-hunting and the batch console."
"The solution does very well as a baseline EDR and provides good process-level management."
"For setup, the server can be given to you as a VM image and with minimal configuration needed."
"Probably the most valuable feature of CB Response is its ability to isolate a host and take it off the network, so it's not spreading anything. We have two security operations centers around the globe. When an SOC analyst sees something on an endpoint, they can use Carbon Black Response to isolate that host from the customer's environment and prevent any kind of lateral spread."
 

Cons

"The biggest friction points I have with Splunk Security Essentials are the high license costs and user behavior that causes performance issues due to inappropriate wildcard searches."
"They could add more AI content or AI and machine learning."
"It takes a lot of time to install Splunk Security Essentials. It's not very difficult, but it requires time."
"The reporting feature needs to be more user-friendly."
"The price could be improved."
"If I could change one thing about Splunk Security Essentials, it would be pricing. I believe they are still very costly as compared to the competition."
"The biggest issue I encountered was one where old logs were not being overwritten as expected so the system drive kept filling up from time to time. However, support was usually quite responsive and happy to jump on a remote session to take a look at it for us. That log bug has probably been resolved with an update by now."
"They need to improve the batch console. It needs more capabilities. We are limited by the ones it provides..."
"It's not simple."
"One area for improvement is the maturity of its vulnerability features."
"The threat intelligence feed could use some fine tweaking."
"One of the big issues we're facing is that their solution doesn't support multi-tenants."
"The support team of Carbon Black CB Response needs improvement. At present, they need a lot of information. Then they give you an answer that they already gave you. You tell them it didn't work, and then they take a long time."
"The solution's support could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"You need to pay for the licensing of the product. The pricing is costly."
"VMware Carbon Black Cloud is an expensive solution."
"The solution is very inexpensive so there is great cost savings to using it."
"Purchase Professional Services up front as part of the implementation package, then renew hours annually to ensure you have adequate support for upgrades and enhancements. Overbuy by at least 10% to account for infrastructure growth."
"We had no issues purchasing through our preferred reseller and were able to get a fair price even when not purchasing direct. Carbon Black Enterprise Response didn’t break the bank, though adding on the matching antivirus and anti-malware components of the Protect product was more than we could afford, even with some discounting. Cb Response is really designed to complement Carbon Black’s Defense product. While Response can be used on its own, coupling with Defense seems like the best strategy if you can afford the price tag."
"Pricing for this solution could be made lower."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Security Essentials?
Our SecOps manager and CISO were more familiar with Splunk, and the price was right. That was probably the primary driver, and we did evaluation as well with strict criteria and Gartner ratings.
What needs improvement with Splunk Security Essentials?
The biggest friction points I have with Splunk Security Essentials are the high license costs and user behavior that causes performance issues due to inappropriate wildcard searches. Additionally, ...
What is your primary use case for Splunk Security Essentials?
My main use case for Splunk Security Essentials is for Enterprise Security, specifically the ES app. Splunk Security Essentials is my primary tool for threat detection and monitoring because as a S...
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) security solution. The CB Predictive Security Cloud platform combines multiple hi...
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 Endpoint Standard (CB Defense), and the other is the Carbon Black Endpoint Detection an...
What needs improvement with Carbon Black CB Response?
I see room for improvement as I remember some problems on compatibility with some operating systems; I recall we couldn't upgrade because the sensor was not compatible, and the latest VMware Carbon...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Carbon Black CB Response
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ALLETE belk
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk Security Essentials vs. VMware Carbon Black Cloud and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.