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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
5.9
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (17th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (17th)
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint
Ranking in Security Incident Response
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (34th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (37th), Ransomware Protection (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Security Incident Response category, the mindshare of Splunk Security Essentials is 2.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is 5.8%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Incident Response Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint5.8%
Splunk Security Essentials2.7%
Other91.5%
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.
reviewer2689206 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior VP, Technology & Leading Technology Office at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Behavior analytics has strengthened threat prediction yet still needs to improve overall standing
Regarding the real-time monitoring feature with VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, it is helpful in addressing unseen threats. I find the behavior analysis feature beneficial. I assess VMware Carbon Black Endpoint's machine learning capabilities in detecting unknown threats as fantastic. The behavior and analytics feature employs machine learning, and these are features which make the product and give that distinguishing, differentiating factor. The intelligent threat hunting capabilities have impacted my customers' cybersecurity efforts by giving them the edge to be prepared well in advance. Whenever this feature provides prediction, you know what action to take. You are aware of a possible attack and what kind of attack it may be, so you are much better prepared.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Splunk Security Essentials has impacted my organization in that we have been getting the results that we wanted."
"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."
"They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks."
"The network monitoring feature is particularly valuable for gathering information about users, login times, and other statistics."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The software uses very few resources; it is almost invisible to the end user."
"We are an MSP, and we deployed this solution for a banking client; we use it to help us defend against advanced persistent threats."
"There's lots of very useful documentation online to help troubleshoot and learn about the product."
"The product is pretty strong in terms of security and their features are very good in that respect."
"The capabilities of this tool are almost limitless."
"The solution has a library where we can have multiple threat intels onboarded. We just have to subscribe to a particular site intel and they'll provide us with all of the truncated details so that we can create IOCs and alerts on the basis of those IOCs."
"It is a very complete platform."
 

Cons

"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 price could be improved."
"The reporting feature needs to be more user-friendly."
"They could add more AI content or AI and machine learning."
"Report generation can be improved."
"The GUI and reporting should be addressed and the product's administration features need fine tuning."
"The directions for Splunk are spot on, but it is difficult to find anything on integration with AlienVault,"
"What was rolled out to my company are mixed versions of Carbon Black CB Defense, so what I'd like to see in the next release is more synchronization, where it can detect the endpoint that's running an old version and suggest updates."
"I'm actually looking for a replacement because of the fact that we lost that integration."
"This solution could have greater granular control on how certain applications work."
"Stability is one thing that's not robust. Other products are faster, but as far as the CB Defense, it's slow."
"With the on-prem one, the bug has been reported by the community in early January or February, something like that, at the beginning of the year, and it's still not addressed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Its pricing was very good, which is one of the reasons I went to it as an alternative. It is on a yearly basis. There are no additional fees."
"It's reasonable in price"
"It is more expensive, but it's worth it. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"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."
"The product is expensive. There are some additional costs apart from the standard licensing charges attached to the solution."
"Overall, it was cost-effective too."
"The pricing is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise33
 

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...
 

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: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.