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Splunk Security Essentials vs VMware Carbon Black Endpoint 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
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (19th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (15th)
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint
Ranking in Security Incident Response
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (22nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Ransomware Protection (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Security Incident Response category, the mindshare of Splunk Security Essentials is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is 8.3%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Incident Response
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas Prudhivi Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to examine the parameters of the events found and take appropriate actions as necessary
Once we've configured our logs, for example, if we need to monitor processes and IP addresses, we ensure these logs are being ingested into our Splunk instance. The logs gathered from various endpoints are then consolidated into our Splunk platform. Once the data is collected, we can create searches and dashboards to analyze it. With these searches and dashboards, we gain insights into events and can make informed decisions based on them. We'll examine the parameters of these events and take appropriate actions as necessary.
KarthikR1 - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution has an easy setup but needs to mature on cloud environment security
The maturity of the Kubernetes security is absent in Carbon Black CB Defense. The solution has to mature on container security and a lot of cloud environment security. Security is available only for Windows, while security for Linux and Mac is not very strong. The deadlock issue causes me to put more effort into installing an upgrade. The numerous issues with the environment of the product solution should be addressed. Work orders are taking more than two months to get resolved. There's been one issue open for two months, and the solution they gave is being implemented step by step. Still, it is not meeting the requirements and breaking the system. Hence, our business is completely disturbed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"I would have to rate Splunk Security Essentials a 10 out of 10 because it's free and there's tons of usable content."
"The network monitoring feature is particularly valuable for gathering information about users, login times, and other statistics."
"It is a scalable solution...The initial setup was straightforward."
"Behavioral Monitoring stops known malicious events before they even begin."
"The solution is extremely scalable."
"You can deploy it through the cloud so that even if your stuff is outside of your controlled environment, you are still under control, based on the policies you create. The policies are controlled through the cloud. For example, if I don't allow anyone to do a certain activity or to install a particular app, and a consultant or a partner who is not part of our environment is doing so, it will stop them as well."
"Carbon Black Defense has a higher detection ratio because it's cloud-based and it also does a lookup to virus total."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the support it provides."
"The portal is easy to use and manage."
"I found it very valuable as a whole. It is good at detecting anything and has kept us very safe. It is also very easy to use."
 

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."
"There's some disparity between the on-premise and the cloud type of application."
"Integration is difficult, but CB Defense is more powerful than others. It is difficult to implement but easy to pick up many detections."
"It could be a bit complicated. You have to be very familiar with Carbon Black to understand what it is doing and why it is doing. I would like to have more explanations and simplification in the user interface. It would be good to get help and see more explanations. It should tell us that a software is blocked and the reason for it. It would be good to be able to build chains in terms of what caused what, what worked, and what caused an issue. We are now moving from Carbon Black to Cortex XDR. While choosing antivirus software, we were also looking at Carbon Black because it also has an antivirus package, and it is next-generation, but we were told that Carbon Black doesn't support firewalls. We have Palo Alto firewalls. We would have chosen this solution if it supported firewalls, in particular next-generation firewalls, but unfortunately, it doesn't. Therefore, we decided on Cortex XDR because it integrates with Palo Alto firewalls."
"The product's reporting capabilities are an area of concern where improvements are required."
"In the past, we've seen some stability issues in the latest version releases. We tend to hang back one version just to make sure issues are fully resolved to avoid user disruption."
"Carbon Black needs to do a better job of proving their platform in the industry, and providing a bit more access to do industry testing with real world examples to help prove their platform."
"The device control feature could also be compatible with the user’s profile as well."
"The directions for Splunk are spot on, but it is difficult to find anything on integration with AlienVault,"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"CB Defense is available on a yearly subscription and is priced by the number of endpoints."
"It is more expensive, but it's worth it. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"In terms of licensing costs, Carbon Black CB Defense was all associated with CROW and the services my company is using with them, so it came all-inclusive."
"The pricing [is] more or less the same as other similar solutions."
"The licensing cost is on the more expensive side, but I thought it was worth it because they did a good job. It was one of the vendors I truly didn't have to worry about too much until this latest upgrade."
"I am not really involved in the pricing of this product. But, from my understanding, it is OK for us."
"VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is an expensive product."
"The solution has almost the same price as other different kinds of infrastructures, but it offers a lot of different features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 cannot say there is any room for improvement because it is free.They could add more AI content or AI and machine learning.
What is your primary use case for Splunk Security Essentials?
We use Splunk Security Essentials ( /products/splunk-security-essentials-reviews ) to create new Splunk searches, as it has many pre-canned searches for security detection.The advanced detection co...
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 do you like most about Carbon Black CB Defense?
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is a highly stable solution.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Carbon Black CB Defense, Bit9, Confer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Netflix, Progress Residential, Indeed, Hologic, Gentle Giant, Samsung Research America
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk Security Essentials vs. VMware Carbon Black Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.