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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
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (16th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (14th)
VMware Carbon Black Cloud
Ranking in Security Incident Response
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (53rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Security Incident Response category, the mindshare of Splunk Security Essentials is 3.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Cloud is 8.0%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Incident Response Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Carbon Black Cloud8.0%
Splunk Security Essentials3.3%
Other88.7%
Security Incident Response
 

Featured Reviews

BM
Information Security Architect at UMMS
Offers a wide range of advanced detection capabilities for identifying suspicious activities
We already talked about Enterprise Security on May 28th.I'm using Splunk Enterprise. We do use SOAR Mission Control, but not AppDynamics or Phantom. We have another freemium app for infrastructure monitoring called ITSI, IT Essentials Work. We also have the ITSI module for virtualization. I would have to rate Splunk Security Essentials a 10 out of 10 because it's free and there's tons of usable content.
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

"The network monitoring feature is particularly valuable for gathering information about users, login times, and other statistics."
"They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks."
"I would have to rate Splunk Security Essentials a 10 out of 10 because it's free and there's tons of usable content."
"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."
"Threat hunting is the most valuable feature of VMware Carbon Black Cloud."
"For setup, the server can be given to you as a VM image and with minimal configuration needed."
"The market information they gather from the community is really good. Their configuration capabilities are good."
"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."
"It is nice when you're in a situation where you think someone's device is compromised and that there's some malware getting into your fleet."
"Setting up and managing the setup for this solution is okay. It is stable, scalable, and it runs just fine. No issues with technical support."
"The ability to quickly isolate a system from the network, while still being able to perform some forensics and mitigation work remotely, was of great value to us since we had many mobile and distributed systems."
"VMware Carbon Black Cloud is a user-friendly solution that can isolate machines from the rest of the network."
 

Cons

"The reporting feature needs to be more user-friendly."
"They could add more AI content or AI and machine learning."
"The price could be improved."
"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."
"The solution needs to simplify the process of adding custom watchlists, as well as embrace YARA for rule creation."
"The solution's support could be improved."
"They need to improve the batch console. It needs more capabilities. We are limited by the ones it provides..."
"Setup is incredibly complex and poorly documented. Every time an upgrade was needed we would need to engage Professional Services for troubleshooting help. Certificates and web services proved to be the most significant sticking points. Since the product runs on a Linux platform, perhaps having staff with more Linux experience could have alleviated some difficulty."
"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."
"There have been some performance issues when deploying on Windows Server, but I believe Carbon Black is working on that."
"It's not simple."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"VMware Carbon Black Cloud is an expensive solution."
"The solution is very inexpensive so there is great cost savings to using it."
"You need to pay for the licensing of the product. The pricing is costly."
"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."
"Pricing for this solution could be made lower."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

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?
I have not used Splunk Security Essentials' customizable dashboards. I have not taken advantage of the pre-built security use cases in Splunk.
What is your primary use case for Splunk Security Essentials?
We use Splunk Security Essentials. We have projects, though not many projects per year. The solution is used to resist cyber attacks. They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks.
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: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.