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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
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 Endpoint
Ranking in Security Incident Response
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (37th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (30th), Ransomware Protection (8th)
 

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 Endpoint is 4.7%, down from 10.4% 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 Endpoint4.7%
Splunk Security Essentials3.3%
Other92.0%
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

"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."
"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."
"What I like the most about it is the dynamic grouping, where you get to group endpoints based on setup criteria. That's pretty cool. I like the simplified policy management and simplified white-listing process."
"It gives you all of the information in a short and sweet fashion."
"It is stable and easy to set up."
"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."
"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."
"The EDR and reports were helpful in improving our organization."
"The intelligent threat hunting capabilities have impacted my customers' cybersecurity efforts by giving them the edge to be prepared well in advance."
"The threat analysis functionality is good."
 

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."
"It would be a better solution if Carbon Black Cb Defense had an on-promise solution and a virus auto delete or quarantine."
"Sensor deployment requires extensive fine-tuning, and creating deployment packages is time-consuming."
"Right now, Carbon Black CB Defense doesn't support cloud computing and Kubernetes."
"The tech support communicates, but it's just not with movement."
"I would like to see improvements made so that we can better see all of the processes."
"Occasionally, we'll have issues with the latest version and they'll basically tell us that they will improve it in the next iteration. They need to work on their version release quality."
"They will most likely need to create or include a feature that checks the network."
"Needs improvement in the area of infrastructure for on-premise installation.​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution has almost the same price as other different kinds of infrastructures, but it offers a lot of different features."
"Price-wise, VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is a highly-priced solution. Regarding the licensing cost of the solution, one needs to opt for an annual subscription."
"Overall, it was cost-effective too."
"The license is annual. It's a standard license."
"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."
"I am not really involved in the pricing of this product. But, from my understanding, it is OK for us."
"The pricing is very high."
"Carbon Black provides competitive pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
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 Enterprise31
 

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 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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.