Elastic Security Reviews

We use it as a SIEM for monitoring a client's environment.

One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it is more flexible than AlienVault. 

It is difficult to anticipate and understand the space utilization, so more clarity there would be great.

My company has been using this solution for two years.

It is a very stable solution.

The solution is very scalable.

The technical support is adequate.

We currently use AlienVault for some clients and Elastic Security for others. We chose Elastic Security because we felt it was the most flexible, cost-effective solution to provide the results needed.

In certain respects, the setup of this solution is more straightforward than other solutions, but in other respects, it's more complex because it needs more fine-tuning than Splunk or AlienVault.

We implemented through an in-house team and it took about two months.

The licensing cost depends on the size of the environment it's monitoring. Everything is based on volume, as with all SIEMs. When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side.

We evaluated several options, including Monster SIEM, Splunk, and Wazuh.

There's a lot of fine-tuning involved with this solution. When you go to a diner, and the menu has everything on it, and you can't figure out which part to look at first, it's a double-edged sword. You can do everything with this solution, which means you have to figure out which part of "everything" makes sense for your company to do.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. It's a good value for money and a  reliable solution, but it's heavily reliant on appropriate configuration.

I worked for a telco client for the security model of Elastic, but my role was unit manager. I don't have a lot of technical expertise, but I decided on the solution for a client, and I was responsible for the delivery.

I worked with the security of the mobile app. I see all the logs in Elastic for SIEM. I monitored the logging and some logs from the machine for a UNIX system with some use cases like the machine's file system.

This solution is deployed on-premise.

We provide this solution to our customers, which are telcos, in the finance industry, and in retail.

I think that it's a good solution for a SIEM.

Elastic doesn't have the features like other competitors in SIEM. For example, Dynatrace as a solution for SIEM has features that Elastic actually don't have.

With Elastic, you have to build the use cases for the specific requirement. Other products have a simple integration and more use cases to integrate out-of-the-box solutions for SIEM. That's the improvement I would like to see.

The product is stable.

Other products like Splunk are better than Elastic for a SIEM because there are some use cases already available for a client. Elastic doesn't have this, so the user must build the SIEM solution. I think that Elastic has to increase the features for the SIEM.

It's not very complicated to install Elastic, but I didn't deploy it.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

It's a good solution and I would recommend it, but there are other products that have more features that Elastic doesn't have.

Overall, the solution is good.

The machine learning aspect of the solution has been great.

The deployment is not that complicated.

ELK is open-source, and it will give you the framework you need to build everything from scratch.

The SIEM modules in Logstash, need more improvement. In the future, the modules could be more advanced as right now there are only very basic modules.

We are facing an issue with the engineers. In the region, there are not many available. Only a few people might be available in our particular region, which is a problem. 

There isn't really a very good user experience. You need a lot of training. There is an interface with limited options. You need to work with the coding and you need to work with the scripts. It's not simple. If you want to configure something, for example, you need to be a proper programmer.

It would ideal if they had a dashboard. Right now, the only way to see what you need to see is to go through all of the logs. 

I've used the solution for one and a half years.

The stability of the solution is good. However, it depends on the configurations. If the solution is configured properly from the beginning, it will be stable. However, if the solution is not configured from beginning properly, it will not be. This is due to the fact that ELK Elasticsearch gives you the framework only, and the customizations depend on the guys who will be coming to configure everything for the company.

The scalability is good, however, there is a certain level of skill that is needed. Due to the lack of trained engineers in the area, this could be a challenge.

We've reached out to technical support in the past. We found that sometimes communication with them was difficult as there was a lack of understanding. This means that it takes a longer time to reach a resolution. However, in the end, when we have had issues, we were able to resolve them, even if it was a bit delayed. 

I've also worked with LogRhythm and there is no comparison. LogRhythm is the best solution for me. The use cases are better and are readily available. In contrast, with ELK, we need to deploy a lot of things. We need to program people and we need skills and training. We need a lot of things. Even the LogRhythm training is easier than ELK. With ELK, you need to build the customization, rules, everything, from scratch. WithLogRhythm, you just have to enable features.

If a company wants some more specific detailed use cases, then ELK would be better than LogRhythm, however, for a generic use case, LogRhythm is better.

The initial setup is pretty simple and straightforward. It's not overly complex. 

That said, it does require trained specialists, and there just aren't that many in our area. 

Overall, I would rate the setup process at a two out of five. 

The configuration must be done correctly, and that depends on who is configuring it. If the person configuring it, for example, only has an administrator background, he will configure the administrator stuff. If he has a security background, he will configure for security.

We are a partner. 

I'd advise others considering the solution that ELK is a good solution, however, it requires skills and capability. You need to be properly trained with it to get the most out of it. 

I would rate the solution at a five out of ten.

It is for our own infrastructure. We are trying to do ELK Stack for everything. We are trying to build our own monitoring solution. For now, we are using it as an alerting solution, and SIEM is going to be our destination.

Its flexibility is most valuable. We can have a number of scenarios, and we can get logs from anything. If we know how to use Logstash, we can tweak it in many ways. This makes the logging search on Elastic very easy.

With Kibana, we can make very beautiful dashboards the way we wanted. It makes sense for the business.

We are paying dearly for the guy who is working on the ELK Stack. That knowledge is quite rare and hard to come by. For difficulty and availability of resources, I would rate it a five out of 10.

We don't have any scalability problems as of now. We have less than 2,000 devices.

We have a contractor who is trying to develop and deploy the ELK Stack for us. He has requested a couple of servers, and we have given those to him. He asked for more RAM and storage for the service, and he will take time developing the custom Logstash scripts that we have asked for.

I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10.

It is complex, but you just need to have patience and personnel to develop it. Unless you explore a technology, you won't know what are the pros and cons. I have not seen any cons as of now, but it has miles to go in terms of being equal to Splunk. It is a community-driven technology. So, it will get there.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10.

Our primary use case of this solution is for application performance monitoring. We are customers of ELK.

This solution enables us to monitor application performance from Elasticsearch and we can predict some behaviors for applications using ELK. This product is distributed and scalable which is good for us.

The troubleshooting or diagnostic tool can be improved to provide a better understanding of internal behavior and how data is stored. It would also be helpful if they were to release the next version as a plugin or an extension, or as a JAR file, for the latest features. When releasing a new version they currently provide a new stack which means everything needs to be removed before the new version is installed. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is generally stable, although with each new upgrade there is an adjustment period. They upgrade versions very regularly and it's hard to keep up. By the time my environment is stable with the previous versions, they are already bringing out a new version. 

Scalability is very good with this product. 

I'm not satisfied with technical support because whenever you raise a case, it goes to some random support person who asks questions about the architecture. It's a waste of time. I'm a platinum customer so each time I raise a request, it should go to a dedicated customer support representative who knows my case. It's very difficult when you work in a highly secure environment to get all the logs and send the logs to them each time. 

The initial setup is easy, but as you begin using the more advanced features like security and authentication with an AM and LM, then it becomes a bit tricky.

Licensing costs are high, they charge based on the nodes and the RAM. If I purchase a license for a 64GB RAM node and then want to have 128GB RAM, I can't because it's not in the contract so I have to pay on top of that. They removed a feature that allows me to provide multiple disks for one node so if I now want to add an extra disk to the volume, I have to buy a license for one extra node. It's very unfair. 

I would recommend this solution for an organization that doesn't require a highly secured environment, because they'll have to deal with the issues of VM upgrades and installations. If it's a highly secured environment like a bank, then I suggest ELK cloud instead of on-prem.

I rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

There are around 150 pre-built use cases. One of the major use cases is when somebody tries to fiddle with logs, Elastic SIEM creates an alert because logs are the most critical things from the security aspect. For example, I have more than 1,000 terminals, which can be desktops, laptops, or any sort of servers. If somebody tries to delete Windows logs, Elastic SIEM immediately generates an alert indicating that somebody is trying to fiddle with the logs. Elastic SIEM sends me a pop-up message as well as an email.

It is very quick to react. I can set it to check anomalies or suspicious behavior every 30 seconds. It is very fast.

Elastic has a lot of beats, such as Winlogbeat and Filebeat. Beats are the agents that have to be installed on the terminals to send the data. When we install beats or Elastic agents on every terminal, they don't overload the terminals. In other SIEM solutions such as Splunk or QRadar, when beats or agents are installed on endpoints, they are very heavy for the terminals. They consume a lot of power of the terminals, whereas Elastic agents hardly consume any power and don't overload the terminals. 

There should be a simulation environment to check whether my Elastic implementation is functioning perfectly fine. Other competitors provide a simulation environment so that I can simulate an IT attack and see how my solution is reacting or giving me alerts. I have not found any such feature in Elastic.

Other solutions have their own Android and iOS applications that I can install on my mobile so that I am continuously connected to the SIEM. This is something missing in Elastic. There is no mobile app.

Its documentation should be a bit better. I have to spend at least a couple of hours to find the solution for a simple thing. The documentation should be more precise and much better than what their counterparts are offering.

When we buy Elastic, training is not included for free with Elastic. We have to pay extra for the training. They should include training in the price.

It is, for sure, reliable.

It is highly scalable. We at least have two dozen people who are using it. Some people may be using only a part of it, and some may be fully involved in it.

We have plans to increase its usage. We are ready with a running full-fledged server, and we can even handle data for potential customers. We are definitely planning to widen its usage.

I have interacted with them. They are quite responsive, and they do respond within the SLA.

I was not there when the deployment was done, but based on what I have heard, it was complex because of the server deployment and cluster formation, and it took at least two months.

Its price is fine. Its licensing works on a yearly basis. We have to renew the license every year.

I also have a good experience with Darktrace. When we buy Darktrace, we get training free of cost, which is not there in Elastic. We have to pay extra for training. There is certainly room for improvement.

I was not in this company when this was chosen.

I would advise going for the latest version, but it may or may not be backward compatible. Nowadays, version 7.12 is the latest version, and I see that it is actually not compatible with the older versions. 

I would rate Elastic SIEM a seven out of ten.

It is currently deployed as a single instance, but we are currently looking at clusters. We are using it for a logging solution. I'm a developer and act as a server engineer for DevOps Engineers. It's used by developers and mobile developers. It could be used by quite a few different teams.

It is quite comprehensive, and you're able to do a lot of tasks. It has dashboards and we're able to create a lot of search queries. It is not easy to use, but once you get the hang of it, then it provides good graphs and visuals such as these. The indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash.

In terms of query resolution, error searching finding and production issues, we're able to find issues quicker. We don't need to manually obtain the logging reports. All bugs in code are quickly identified in the logs as they are in one centralized logging location.

We're using the open-source edition, for now, I think maybe they can allow their OLED plugin to be open source, as at the moment it is commercialised. We are planning to go into the production to use the enterprise edition, we just wanted to check how this one works first.  I think maybe on the last exercise part, I think the index rotation can be improved. It's something that they need to work on. It can be complex on how the index, all the logs that have been ingested, the index rotation can be challenging, so if they can work on that. In terms of ingestion, I think they should look at incorporating all operating systems. It should be easy to collect logs from different sources without a workaround to push the logs into the system. For example, in AIX, there's no direct log shipper so you do need to do a bit of tweaking there.

We have been using ELK Logstash for three years or so. We believe we are using the latest version. 

The solution is quite stable, although it does need a bit of maintenance, and because there is quite a lot of plugins that come with it. There's a lot of testing that is involved to ensure that nothing breaks.

The solution is scalable. So you're able to extend it and grow it. For example, you're able to put it in a cluster, so it is quite scalable.

I have used the technical support. Their forums are quite good in terms of response. There is quite a big community of forums, where you can get similar question or issues that others have experienced issues previously. Even then direct support is quite good. They also have regional support. 

Logging solution previously, but mainly I've been using Graylog and ELK. Graylog gives you centralized logging. It's built for a logging solution, whereas ELK is designed and built for more big data. If you want to go in deeper into analytics, ELK gives you that flexibility and out of the box models. The two solutions are widely used by a lot of bigger clients in the industry and they've been tried and tested.

With ELK, installation is not really straightforward. There are about three applications to consider. It's quite intense in terms of set up, but once you've done the setup, then it's nice and smooth. The implementation took about 3 weeks, but that is because I was doing it in between other projects. We used an implementation plan. It was deployed to the development environment, then the Point of Concept (POC) environments. It was then deployed into the production environment.

We implemented the solution in-house. There were no third parties involved. For deployment and maintenance, we just need about two to three people and the role is known as maintenance and installation.

We're using the open-source solution, So there are no-cost implications on it, but we are planning to use it throughout the organization. So, we will soon adopt the open-source model and depending on if there is a need for enterprise then we'll go down the enterprise route. If you need a lasting solution, you do need to buy the license for the OLED plugin. The free version comes fully standard and has everything that you need. It is easy to deploy, easy to use, and you get everything you need to become operational with it, and have nothing further to pay unless you want the OLED plugin. 

We also have Graylog, for Graylog we're using it in parallel for a similar solution. At the moment, we're basically just comparing the two and see which one is preferred.

Do a POC first. They should compare solutions and also look at different log formats they're trying to ingest. See how it really fits with the use case. This goes for ELK and Graylog. You can trial the enterprise version. In terms of lessons learned it does need some time and resources. It also needs adequate planning. You need to follow the documentation clearly and properly. I would give this solution 8 out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution to have a correlation on all the Windows event logs. We use it more for forensic purposes now. We are looking for something which will be a more proactive product for us and be able to detect any threats and take automatic action.

All of the features on the solution are useful due to the fact that I have the full Stack, therefore I can collect and then visualize. We have the dashboard tutor as well.

The solution has a good community surrounding it for lots of helpful documentation for troubleshooting purposes.

The solution is lacking some features of AI and machine learning. There may be a feature out there we are not using or maybe it's on a different solution, however, having more AI would be so helpful for us.

The solution needs to be more reactive to investigations. We need to be able to detect and prevent any attacks before it can damage our infrastructure. Currently, this solution doesn't offer that.

I know there are some features which are coming, and which is already available. To be honest, I haven't had any time to play around and check what could be the advantages of them. Compared to other products, already the features available - and there are lots of things which are provided - are quite useful. We are not managing it. We're only using it. For us, if we had the technical skills to manage the solution, we might be able to see and understand a few features that we're not already taking advantage of.

I've been using the solution for three years.

The solution is scalable for us now, although it didn't start that way.

We have about 50 users between SecOps and the Microsoft team. The network team of between 50 and 100 people are using it on a regular basis.

I never had to be in contact with technical support. I mainly rely on the communities around the solution and that is where I find almost all of the information I need. They're great. There's lots of information available that helps you troubleshoot issues.

We previously used a product from Quest Software called Change Auditor. We actually didn't switch off this solution. We use both Quest and ELK in our organization.

The main difference is that one you have to pay for, while the other one is much cheaper and if you don't need all the features, you can use it for free.

ELK has much more information, as well. You can grab much more information with ELK than you can with Change Auditor, without adding any additional modules.

The initial setup as I recall was pretty easy. However, I moved to an infrastructure that had a connection to a second ELK instance that I am not managing.

The settings on that instance are more complex than my initial setup. 

I am not a specialist in big data infrastructure. I am a process engineer. You need some dedicated and well-trained people as soon as you have a large infrastructure and you are sending a lot of events to the elastic instance so that it is performed correctly. That's always the challenge you have with on-premise infrastructure.

I'm not sure how much the company pays to use ELK. It's not part of the job that I handle.

We're ELK customers. Mostly I'm a specialist on the infrastructure of the solution.

The solution is perfect as long as you are using it for forensics. In terms of threat detection, it could be better. There could be another product that is more appropriate for that aspect.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

This is a log aggregation tool and we are using it for security purposes.

There are 145 pre-built use cases, but we are still making some ourselves. One we built is an alarm for log deletion. For example, if a hacker tries to delete the log from a bank machine then it will raise an alarm immediately. A second use case is an alert for too many false login attempts, perhaps indicating a brute-force attack.

The most valuable feature is the speed, as it responds in a very short time. I think that the alerts are generated in less than a minute.

It is very easy to set up and doesn't take much time.

There are sensors called beats that have to be installed on all of the client machines, and there are seven or eight of them. As it is now, each beat needs to be configured separately, which can be quite hectic if my client has 1000+ machines. It would take a considerable period of time for us to complete the installation. They have begun working on this in the form of agents, which is a centralized management tool wherein all beats will be installed in a single stroke.

The training that is offered for Elastic is in need of improvement because there is no depth to it. It hardly takes 15 or 20 minutes to complete a training session that they say will take two hours to finish. Clearly, something is missing. If a new engineer wants to work with Elastic then it is really very hard for them to understand the technology. 

I have been using Elastic SIEM for two or three months.

This is a stable system and it has never crashed.

Elastic SIEM is definitely stable. We have just started working on it, so we have no more than perhaps 100 users at this point. At the same time, we are confident that it can be scaled up to any extent.

I am satisfied with the technical support.

The initial setup is easy. The length of time for deployment on a machine depends on the configuration that is required. If it uses all 145 use cases then it will take a long time. If on the other hand there are only a small set of use cases, it will be very quick. I would say that it takes no more than 30 minutes to install one.

I have personally worked with Splunk in the past, but here at this company, they only use Elastic. I believe that one of the major differences between these two is the pricing model. With Splunk, it depends on how much data we are ingesting. For us, it is approximately 500 GB per day. Elastic has a different pricing system that is ultimately cheaper.

One of the advantages of Splunk is that they offer extensive training that is free of cost.

My advice to anybody who is considering this product is that it is a very competitive tool that is very new in the market and the vendor is doing their best to improve services. I highly recommend it and suggest that people choose it without a second thought.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Elastic Security makes data communication easier.

The solution should generate an automatic product that integrates with ELK Stack to use artificial intelligence.

The solution is not expensive and costs around ten dollars a month.

The solution allows you to generate alerts. You can automatically detect and configure mail in some addresses and automatically identify the identity that you have in your system. This is important for confidentiality in order to control the risks in identifying the users. The solution also uses artificial intelligence to identify anyone using your system.

We use the solution to monitor the activities of the people in the organization to prevent attacks in a controlled environment. We use the tool to observe the behavior of attacks and how to mitigate them. Today, security is more important than people know. You need to know who has access to your network, repository, or cell phone.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.