When we identify a threat in the environment, we try to track down whether it has moved from one system to another or there is any lateral movement. When we are trying to figure out how it got started and where it came from, we use Splunk to identify those logs. Palo Alto is our biggest index for the firewall, and we can look into those logs, see the relevant data, and correlate it into something that makes sense, so we can track down the problem.
Makes it easier to read the index data
Pros and Cons
- "Its alerting is most valuable. We have alerts set up in our environment for certain attacks, such as an SQL injection attempt. We have a front-facing server for the website. It is out there, and anybody can access it. When those SQL injection attempts come in, we are able to detect that with the alert."
- "I do not have any pain points for Splunk Enterprise Security. I am still trying to learn it, but there can be more information on the education side for Splunk Enterprise Security. It would be nice if the certification path was more specific to what I use instead of being so broad."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
For the most part, it makes it easier to read the index data. Instead of trying to look through an individual index, all the logs, and other aspects, it brings everything to one area. I can look at the relevant data that I need to identify the threat.
Splunk Enterprise Security has helped reduce our mean time to resolve. I do not have the metrics, but I know it is faster compared to the old way of doing it. Previously, we had to go through Windows logs and security logs. We had to go through each log to figure out what happened. I can pull all of the information way faster with Splunk Enterprise Security. I can look at multiple systems.
Splunk's unified platform has helped consolidate networking, security, and IT observability tools.
Splunk Enterprise Security brings all the logs into one central location to look at the relevant data and filter out the things I do not use. We are able to see the logs of multiple systems, the logs of the firewall, and the logs of the DNS and the Windows servers. It is able to bring all of that together and give a nice, solid picture of what is happening. We can read those logs faster.
Splunk Enterprise Security provides end-to-end visibility into the environment. It is very important for our organization to be able to see the threats, understand the threats, and figure out how to stop those threats. That is the importance of it. We are a casino. After what happened last year with two casinos in terms of hacking, we want to be able to stop that from happening to us. We learned a lot of lessons from what happened to the other two casino properties, and we applied them to a lot of our tools. Splunk Enterprise Security gives us a heads-up a lot faster.
Splunk Enterprise Security helped improve our organization’s business resilience.
What is most valuable?
Its alerting is most valuable. We have alerts set up in our environment for certain attacks, such as an SQL injection attempt. We have a front-facing server for the website. It is out there, and anybody can access it. When those SQL injection attempts come in, we can detect that with the alert. We get the alert in our mailbox, so we can start looking at it right away. Generally, with a SQL injection attempt, there is way more to it than just the SQL injection. There could be another 15 or 20 different types of attacks attempted during the injection. They are just trying to see if there is any vulnerability, and then they can take a shot at it.
What needs improvement?
I do not have any pain points for Splunk Enterprise Security. I am still trying to learn it, but there can be more information on the education side for Splunk Enterprise Security. It would be nice if the certification path was more specific to what I use instead of being so broad.
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Enterprise Security
December 2025
Learn what your peers think about Splunk Enterprise Security. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for about six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Besides the forwarder, it is nice. The forwarder ran out of space, so it occasionally has to be rebooted to clear out the space that is being utilized.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have 50 gigs of data.
How are customer service and support?
I never really had to use professional services. For the most part, everybody is knowledgeable and patient, and there is a decent amount of communication back and forth.
I would rate their support an eight out of ten. My biggest issue right now has not been solved yet. Our heavy forwarder ran out of space. It is a VM. By using vCenter, we presented more space to the drive, but we could not get the VM or the Linux OS to allocate the new space. So far, nobody has been able to help us fix that. The current solution is to just upgrade it. We are not in a position to upgrade it right now because of the workload.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I changed my career last year to InfoSec. I was in IT before that. With IT, if there is a problem with the system, we just look at the logs. With Splunk, it is nice to be able to have it all centralized in my location where I can look at the data relatively fast as opposed to a line-by-line.
How was the initial setup?
I was not involved in its setup. We have a bit of a hybrid setup. We have an on-prem data center and then we also have a cloud. We have Azure Cloud.
What was our ROI?
I would say that we have seen an ROI, but I do not know the numbers.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Security Delivery Analyst at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Improves our incident response time, has customizable dashboards, and speeds up our security investigations
Pros and Cons
- "I like the Splunk dashboard and search engine."
- "Although the technical support is adequate, there is still room for improvement."
What is our primary use case?
We use Splunk Enterprise Security for security log investigation. It is a SIEM platform. Many cybersecurity and technical alerts generated by Splunk turn out to be false positives. We then analyze these alerts to determine if they indicate a genuine security threat.
How has it helped my organization?
We will be ingesting logs from various sources, including firewalls, databases, Windows devices, and Linux devices. These logs will be used to investigate security incidents and troubleshoot system issues. Our use cases will be brief and focused, allowing us to leverage pre-defined queries in Splunk for efficient analysis. These queries will trigger alerts based on specific security or operational criteria within the predefined use cases. We will then investigate the triggered alerts by further analyzing the corresponding logs.
Splunk Enterprise has improved our incident response time. For instance, if an end user attempts to log in to a system with an invalid password from a device using an unusual port number, we will receive an immediate alert. This could be indicative of a brute-force attack aimed at stealing credentials, making it a suspicious activity. This is just one example of how Splunk Enterprise enhances our security posture.
Splunk's threat detection capabilities are strong, and Splunk is a leading platform for SoC monitoring. To maximize effectiveness, we need to develop strong query-building skills. Additionally, we have the flexibility to fine-tune existing queries or remove them altogether once an issue is resolved.
The customizable dashboards of Splunk are good for visualization. It gives a better understanding, and the graph is highly customizable.
I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security a nine out of ten for analyzing malicious activities.
Splunk Enterprise Security helped the organization control suspicious and malicious activities.
Splunk Enterprise Security has helped speed up our security investigations.
Splunk Enterprise Security's customization capabilities enable integration with other tools like EDRs, providing real-time event insights.
What is most valuable?
I like the Splunk dashboard and search engine.
What needs improvement?
Although the technical support is adequate, there is still room for improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for 2 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability of Splunk Enterprise Security 9 out of 10.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability of Splunk Enterprise Security 9 out of 10.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is adequate.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security nine out of ten.
While I understand the desire for a cost-effective SIEM solution, prioritizing security over budget is crucial. In cybersecurity, even a seemingly minor breach can have significant consequences. Therefore, choosing the best SIEM for your needs, even if it has a higher upfront cost, can ultimately save money and protect your organization.
We have Splunk Enterprise Security deployed in four locations in one country.
Splunk takes care of the maintenance of the solution.
I recommend Splunk Enterprise Security to others.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Enterprise Security
December 2025
Learn what your peers think about Splunk Enterprise Security. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Service Management Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Offers great visibility and good connectors to users
Pros and Cons
- "I have not seen any outages in the product in the past two years that it has been running in our company, so I think it is good when it comes to the stability part."
- "The product's price may be an area of concern where improvements are required."
What is our primary use case?
We use it in our company to log everything. We use tools like XSOAR to take appropriate actions to mitigate threats.
How has it helped my organization?
Splunk Enterprise Security has aided our organization in the way it provides great visibility and helps with what our company's users do with it.
What is most valuable?
I like how easy it is to integrate the logging of all of the various nodes. The product also offers nice connectors. Other features include the product's ability to allow users to customize their dashboards, signatures, metrics, and other elements, making it a very valuable and reliable tool for my organization.
What needs improvement?
I don't know if there is a need for any improvements in the product since it is one of my peers and not me who is directly responsible for Splunk Enterprise Security in our company, so I will have to ask him if there are any requirements associated with the product.
The price may be an area of concern where improvements are required. Splunk Enterprise Security doesn't indulge in whitewashing, but Cisco does it too much.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not seen any outages in the product in the past two years that it has been running in our company, so I think it is good when it comes to the stability part. I have had an experience with the vendor during which there were two products, one from the vendor and the other from Splunk Enterprise Security, and we saw that one of them was not able to capture all the logs appropriately, after which our company had to figure out whether it was Splunk API or the vendor's tool.
How are customer service and support?
I have never used the product's customer support. My peer has contacted the product's technical support team, and it has worked very well for him.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
My company used to use one of the spin-offs from IBM. My organization has used IBM QRadar.
How was the initial setup?
Though I am not sure about the deployment model, I feel that since it may not be on Azure, the product must be deployed with the help of AWS.
What was our ROI?
I have experienced an ROI revolving around the product's dashboards, metrics, and other such related stuff, but I don't know how to quantify them. My peer would be the best person to speak about the product's ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My peer would be aware of the product's pricing part.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There was a pre-vendor selection approach my company followed, but I don't remember the names of the products involved.
What other advice do I have?
It is pretty important how the solution provides end-to-end visibility in our company's environment because it provides opportunities for shadow IT and for people to do things that they should be doing. If one is appropriately logging in, the product gives us a view and helps our company discover things that we didn't know about.
In terms of Splunk Enterprise Security's ability to help our company find any security events across multi-cloud, on-prem, or hybrid environments, I will have to say that since we are still using it, it has to be effective. If it wasn't effective in the aforementioned area, my peer would have found something else in the product. I don't have enough personal insight into Splunk Enterprise Security's ability to help our company find any security events across multi-cloud, on-prem, or hybrid environments.
Splunk Enterprise Security has helped to reduce my company's alert volume. Our organization does get alerts, and we are trained for them. I will have to ask my peer to give me the exact number associated with the alerts my company receives.
The solution provides the relevant context that helps guide our company's investigations. The context information has impacted our company's investigation process as it definitely speeds it up because we have only a single source from which we can get that, and it helps us understand what may have taken place in a particular incident that we are looking at in our organization. In our company, if we look at any of the other services, we can see whether a particular or specific user touched just a single system or ten different systems.
The solution has helped reduce my company's mean time to resolve, but I don't have numbers to explain it.
The reason why I rate the tool a nine is because of the flexibility it provides to go back to the dashboards. The flexibility to be able to customize standard dashboards and other standard things that I want to be able to grab and have them pop out and then be able to create some sort of an action against those kinds of things that I want, of which the first is the standard reporting part, which is very valuable.
To those planning to use the solution, I would suggest that they need to get Splunk to work hard on the pricing part. People also need to encourage Splunk to stay true to its roots because I have seen what has happened to some of the other tools in the market. Splunk has been acquired by Cisco. You want Splunk because of its capabilities, not because of what Cisco wants to give you.
If I consider my company's needs, I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Analyst, TSG Information Security Cyber Operations at a consultancy with 5,001-10,000 employees
Lots of learning materials, responsive support, and good visualization capabilities
Pros and Cons
- "There are lots of free learning materials on their website."
- "The level of scalability depends on the license you have. You can expand or reduce it based on the environment. It does cost more money to scale, however."
What is our primary use case?
We use the product mostly just to pull out the reports, medical investigations, et cetera. As a security analyst, we can look at and pull data. You can make a central hub for a lot of different sources, including servers and endpoints. It makes it easy to check logs for every device connected.
How has it helped my organization?
If you are a data analyst, security analyst, or anyone who basically requires a set of data in your database job, and you have to have normalized data represented or, just to check for any patterns, this is quite helpful. With Splunk, you can pull in the data, you can transform it, and represent the data via graphs or pull the data and export it into Excel and perform further investigations. The use cases are quite deep.
What is most valuable?
With this product, you can go for an in-depth search or just perform a surface-level search. There are different modes in which you can perform searches, and that basically defines the speed of how fast you can get the data. If you are going for a more detailed version offered, it'll take a bit of time. However, they'll give you more and more data. There's also a fast mode in it.
The data which you can pull, you can basically visualize it, you can normalize the data, evaluate it, and convert the data into tables. It's much easier to pull the data, organize it, and normalize it as you are performing the searches. That's quite helpful.
I prefer working with cloud infrastructure like this as you can increase the storage capacity or the license at any time and search for a number of different endpoints. If you want to ingest more and more data, having something like Splunk available on the cloud is preferable.
I take advantage of the incident response part of the solution. If anything happens at the endpoint, if anything happens at the user system, servers, or something like that, my role is to look into the logs, go through other investigations, perform a time scan, and create a timeline of all the events. This helps do that job.
I'm also aware they have a Mission Control. I have actually attended a few surveys on that, however, I haven't really implemented it due to the fact that we are in the middle of a few of the projects, and things are at higher priority as of now. So we haven't really focused on that.
Using Splunk, we can check out what server versions we have. If we just cross-check with the database, we can see if we have any availability and then we can pull in the files. If you have a database, you can perform a query to check for any particular problems in the entire environment. For the threat notifications, it's quite helpful.
Indirectly, it's helped us reduce our alert volume. If you have a list of files, you can run it through the environment and, based on that, create rules and exceptions. This indirectly helps reduce alert amounts. You can go through false positives and sort them out as well and create a rule against them.
It's helped speed up security investigations. Being a central hub of logs, we can jump into a different log or source and jump into any investigation. You don't have to jump from one tool to another. This automatically reduces the investigation time.
There are lots of free learning materials on their website.
Overall, things are quite easy. It's a simple solution.
What needs improvement?
I haven't explored beyond the security aspect as a data analyst. I haven't noticed any shortcomings so far.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for more than a year now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There are different modules, and I haven't activated all yet, however, the stability is okay. I would rate it seven out of ten. If we run into issues, there are materials they provide and online support. You can even call them.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is deployed to one location. It's deployed across the entire environment.
The level of scalability depends on the license you have. You can expand or reduce it based on the environment. It does cost more money to scale, however.
I would rate scalability seven out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
Support is quite responsive. They also offer 24/7 support services.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Palo Alto XDR.
I also used an email solution whose name I can't recall. You could check emails flowing into or out of your environment.
How was the initial setup?
I wasn't involved in the deployment; the solution was set up when I arrived.
That said, I did go through some setup videos, and the process does not look difficult. They provide the steps for every aspect. There's also always support you can reach out to if you have questions.
There may be some maintenance required in terms of upgrading. When you upgrade the version, you may need to upgrade your sensors on the endpoints. However, Splunk is quite compatible with other devices, so it's not difficult. In our company, the administrators handle maintenance.
What was our ROI?
I haven't witnessed an ROI in terms of how I'm using the tool.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's mostly for EDR. You can cover servers as well; however, that requires additional licenses. Pricing is based on usage. As an EDR specialist, I interact with the tools and perform investigations. I don't deal with licensing directly.
This is quite new to me. I've only recently started working with Splunk. I used to work in EDR. It took me two to three months to understand the internal architecture of the organization, and based on that, I can use Splunk for all kinds of searches. So, how long it takes to realize the benefits of Splunk depends on the person and the complexity of the environment.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other options. I adopted this tool when I joined my current organization.
What other advice do I have?
We're a Splunk customer.
To those considering just going with the cheapest solution, it depends on your level of comfort with support. If you have a cheaper tool, the support would be addressed. With Splunk, that's the difference - their support response. If you have a tool with a good license, you will be able to get immediate help if there's any vulnerability.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
I'd advise others to take time to learn the solution and develop skills. It's all about DSL queries. If you are off on queries, it won't give you any results. You need to be accurate with your SQL commands.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
IS Engineer at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
Enables us to drive down the alert count and the alert fatigue for analysts to make the alerts they see more valuable and actionable
Pros and Cons
- "The UI of Splunk makes it easier for our analysts to move around and see what they need to see."
- "Features related to content management must be improved."
What is our primary use case?
Our SOC uses the solution to monitor our corporate and franchise environments.
What is most valuable?
Risk-based alerting is the most valuable feature. It really allows me to drive down the alert count and the alert fatigue for my analysts to make the alerts they see more valuable and actionable. The way that alerts are handled is better in Splunk. SPL is easier in Splunk. The UI of Splunk makes it easier for our analysts to move around and see what they need to see.
What needs improvement?
There are a lot of areas that are currently being improved that I want to be improved. Features related to content management must be improved. The product is adding more drill-downs.
When the tool was originally set up, things were not configured properly due to the rapid deadlines for installing everything. Now, we have to go back and recover a lot of things that aren't properly configured.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for approximately four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I haven't seen any issues with stability. Most of the stability issues I've seen have actually been on the on-prem hardware.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have no issues at all with scalability. The tool has high scalability and usability. The size of our environment is relatively large since it is an enterprise solution. We have around 5000 users and a franchise base.
How are customer service and support?
I have never had an issue with Splunk’s support team. Every time I ask a question, I usually receive really quick responses. We are in the middle of a migration, and the engineers helping us migrate to Splunk Cloud have been fantastic every step of the way. They provide really rapid and complete answers when we ask questions.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I use LogRhythm a lot. I worked for an MSSP, so I have seen several products. So far, Splunk has been my favorite.
What was our ROI?
We have definitely seen an ROI on the solution. Any security tool has a fantastic ROI. A lot of companies don't like to budget for security until there's an incident or something goes terribly, terribly wrong. Just having that SIEM and having eyes on potential security issues is an ROI.
What other advice do I have?
We are behind a few versions. So I hope that as we upgrade, I get more ideas for what I'd like to improve. We're still in the process of moving to the cloud.
The product has improved our organization's business resilience. The right tools are available to our analysts within the product, and we use them daily. It has drastically driven down our time to remediate, which is huge for us. It's huge for any company. We don't want four hours to find out that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Finding such issues before they turn into full-blown security incidents has been our biggest impact.
Splunk Enterprise Security empowers our staff. It is so user-friendly. It allows our analysts at every level to learn the tool and learn more about security through the tool. I progressed from level one. Now, I'm a content developer for enterprise security. The usability of Splunk is the best on the market. The solution has helped reduce our mean time to resolve.
As we add new features and applications into Splunk, time to value is pretty quick on most things. As long as we have someone that's willing to go through the effort to configure, the time to value is rapid. Adding applications to Splunk is a seamless experience. The UI of Splunk makes life so much easier. Some of my experience is based on technical debt in the organizations I worked with. I would probably rate the tool a ten if we didn't have so much technical debt.
By attending Splunk conferences, I get to learn about all the new tools and how to implement them. I use it for RBA and Machine Learning Toolkit. I develop content for our company. I am here to learn how to implement RBA and Machine Learning Toolkit better to reduce alert fatigue for my analysts.
Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
IT Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
We can script advanced queries with limited knowledge, uncover unknown threats, and identify anonymous user behavior
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is the DSS, also known as SPL, because it allows users to script advanced queries with limited knowledge."
- "The CIM model is the method Splunk uses to normalize data and categorize its important parts, but it is quite complex."
What is our primary use case?
Our customers utilize Splunk Enterprise Security for either their cybersecurity program or their data warehouse program.
How has it helped my organization?
Splunk Enterprise Security's threat detection capabilities are effective in assisting organizations to uncover unknown threats and identify anonymous user behavior. However, this effectiveness is dependent on using the UBA modules and having the proper infrastructure in place.
MITRE ATT&CK is the framework that we use to detect and track well-known threats. When there are well-known threats, we can utilize the MITRE ATT&CK to identify any anomalies.
Splunk Enterprise Security has its own routine and process defined for analyzing malicious activities and detecting breaches. Mainly, we baseline the client's business process and day-to-day activity and then use it to detect malicious activity through various scenarios.
Splunk Enterprise Security assists us in detecting threats more quickly. We have an abundance of unrelated and meaningless data from the raw logs, and the solution aids us in organizing and correlating this data so that we can extract meaningful events and take appropriate action. This is the primary objective for the majority of our clients.
In most cases, we provide monitoring and intelligence to our customers based on how they use the solution. This allows other technical teams, such as PC, system support, and other tech units, to take appropriate actions. Our main role is to provide them with alerts and use case scenarios, while the detection and actions are primarily related to other aspects.
When we initially implement Splunk Enterprise Security, there are many alerts and false positives. However, with time, we are able to align our configuration with the client's requirements and do more baselining, reducing such issues.
Splunk Enterprise Security helps to expedite security investigations. Without a security solution, our security team is unable to identify threats because the log and auditing data are unrelated and uncategorized. Consequently, we cannot access them promptly. Therefore, having a solution like Splunk Enterprise Security is crucial for our cybersecurity program. For certain clients' needs, we prefer using open-source applications like ELK and ESK. However, if they opt for an enterprise and commercial product, Splunk is among the top three choices.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the DSS, also known as SPL, because it allows users to script advanced queries with limited knowledge.
What needs improvement?
The CIM model is the method Splunk uses to normalize data and categorize its important parts, but it is quite complex. Simplifying this process would assist security officers in assessing threats and using the system more efficiently.
I would appreciate it if Splunk could add the feature of importing and exporting from web servers and third-party devices during project and process development. This addition would greatly enhance the value of the solution making the maintenance for the security officer easier.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of Splunk Enterprise Security an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Splunk Enterprise Security can be easily scaled once it has been installed and deployed.
Cyber threat levels are increasing every day, especially during the pandemic when most employees needed remote access to their business services. As a result, many organizations experienced a surge in attacks and required a resilient SIEM and cybersecurity solution.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used ELK, ESK, QRadar, Graylog, and LogRhythm in the past. One of Splunk's strengths over its competitors is its dedicated DSS called SPL.
The drawback of Splunk Enterprise Security is that upon initial installation, we need to do a lot of customization in order to have an effective cybersecurity program and deliver quality service to the client.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward, but we need to make some configurations afterward that can be a bit complex. The deployment time depends on the size, but it usually takes several months to ensure stability and requires two SIEM engineers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Splunk Enterprise Security is hardly affordable for most of our clients, causing many of them to resort to using open source solutions instead.
In addition to the licensing fee, there is also a support and maintenance charge.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Splunk Enterprise Security an eight out of ten due to its high total cost of ownership, difficulties in maintenance, and the complexity of configuration immediately after deployment.
Splunk Enterprise Security may not be cost-effective for small and even some medium-sized companies. While each organization has different requirements, we do recommend Splunk for medium and large organizations.
Organizations should take into account the complexity of their environment. For instance, if they have a purely vendor-based environment for their network security appliance, it may be easier for them to handle security, fabric, and architecture requirements. However, if they operate in a multi-vendor and mixed environment, they need to conduct more research on how to integrate various components. Often, they rush into negotiating their cybersecurity program without sufficient research, leading to potential problems for clients.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Delivery Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides more versatile dashboard than other solutions and very fast search functionality
Pros and Cons
- "Splunk's advantage is its search capability. Its search is notably faster. With Splunk, I can search easily on keywords. That is great."
- "Previously, they developed custom connectors or add-ons for a lot of applications. But that number can be upgraded still. There are a lot of applications in the world that are not supported."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case is security and data analytics. In general, we manage and maintain it for our customers.
What is most valuable?
Application-wise, it's good. Searching and reporting of data analytics is also fine. The dashboard presentations are also a good feature. Overall, its functionality is great and that's why we use it.
What needs improvement?
I would like additional support for custom add-ons, as well as cloud integration. Right now we have concerns because we have to customize applications for direct integration. But on-prem, it is all functional. We have to build it on our own. Previously, they developed custom connectors or add-ons for a lot of applications. But that number can be upgraded still. There are a lot of applications in the world that are not supported.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Splunk Enterprise Security for over two years. I received Splunk certification six years ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the functionality is good, but there are still bugs that keep hindering things. I am waiting but they are there and that is quite common. I think they have not yet been resolved from the older versions. The stability is a seven-plus out of 10.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's scalable for all environments. Splunk Cloud can be scaled to a small or medium company, depending on their inputs or log resources. Businesses at the high end of medium-sized, and large companies, can go with the on-prem solution.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is good.
However, there is a lot of delay nowadays. The last time we raised a case, it took quite a long for them to come back with their first response. That's not for a P1 or P2, but if it is a P3, they don't respond at the earliest. When they respond, it is quite late and we have to ask again. The first response is never an answer. It's always a query.
Still, the people I have worked with there are all an eight-plus out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
It can be deployed on-prem or in the cloud. With the latter, it is Splunk's own cloud.
The deployment of the solution is straightforward, but there is a lot of engineering activity involved in designing the architecture. Architecture-wise, it is fine, and bringing things together is not that tough, but maintaining and managing it is a tough job because we don't work in a normal environment. We work on something that is very defined to the network. That means we have to build everything from scratch and deploy it.
The implementation strategy depends on how the customer wants things done. But in general, I go through research and then develop and design. I ask the client what sort of environment is flexible or cost-effective for them. It's done in stages. It's a matter of understanding the infrastructure and then implementing, or designing and handing it over to them.
If there are 1,000 log sources, it takes six months to a year to deploy, depending on how the customer is supporting the process.
Every on-prem solution involves maintenance, including keeping things upgraded, whereas Splunk Cloud is managed by the vendor. The number of people involved in on-prem maintenance depends on the size of the environment and how long our update window is. For example, if we have a green zone at midnight for three hours, and we want to upgrade at least 20 to 30 servers, it will take eight to 10 people working in parallel. But for a very small environment of 10 servers, it will take four people to manage it, or if we have a large window, even three people can do it.
What about the implementation team?
We do it ourselves.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing depends on the bandwidth of an organization and is good compared to some SIEM tools. IBM, for example, is quite costly. But Microsoft Sentinel is notably cheaper. I have seen a lot of organizations running on Sentinel.
IBM is for quite large organizations that don't want to have their data on the cloud. Splunk has both on-prem and cloud modules and, cost-wise, Splunk is better. Internally, we cannot push everything to the cloud. That would become too expensive for us. So we have it sitting in our data center and that is good.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have worked with a number of other solutions including RSA enVision, IBM QRadar, as well as Microsoft, McAfee, and LogRhythm.
If we want to build an add-on feature in Splunk, we have to build an application and then integrate it. But in other applications, there is a direct integration that only requires partial development and it will start functioning.
Also, there is something called correlation in a lot of other tools. Splunk also has it but it consumes a lot of memory. If we tag all the data, it is better, but tagging consumes storage and it makes it a little tough for us to run a search.
If we want to work towards SOAR, if there were a little bit more integration so that our customers could taste SOAR, they could then move to Splunk Phantom or other tools. Right now, people are not using automation. Everything is done manually. Hopefully, that's the next goal. Security operations will surely use SOAR and, once they start tasting it, they'll get to know how it works. They can design playbooks and start using it. That's an additional feature I would like Splunk to bring in.
Splunk's advantage is its search capability. Its search is notably faster. With Splunk, I can search easily on keywords. That is great. It also has something called "stats" and it runs much faster. Within minutes, it gives the data from a very large set. Spunk's dashboards are also a very good thing. No other application or tool is as versatile in presenting the dashboard. It all comes down to presentation. It may take a little bit of engineering work to develop and customize, to parse the fields and fetch the data, but the presentation is good.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Cyber Security Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
We watch all the information in just one place and it provides end-to-end visibility
Pros and Cons
- "The risk-based alerting (RBA) is one of the valuable features."
- "I would like to see the asset and identity lookups be more automatic and less manual."
What is our primary use case?
We use it alongside some endpoints to detect log ins outside of scheduled work hours. If someone logs in outside of that range, we generate an alert for the security team to review.
How has it helped my organization?
I can use the MITRE ATT&CK framework. With the data that I ingest into ES, the MITRE app gives me visibility into what I'm covering from the techniques and tactics in the framework, which is pretty cool and convenient.
At the end of the day, it's the platform receiving the logs from all the other apps. You're watching all the information in just one place, so it's basically the core tool in the company. So, it is really important that Splunk Enterprise Security provides end-to-end visibility into our environment.
In a way, Splunk Enterprise Security helped improve our organization's ability to ingest and normalize data. However, there are a few tools that are hard to normalize or use data models. And some of the add-ons don't work properly sometimes. Not all of them, but a few.
Splunk Enterprise Security helped us reduce our alert volume by 30%.
Moreover, Splunk Enterprise Security provides us with the relevant context to help guide our investigations. And it's important because we need to set up the basis of the context of what we want to see.
Splunk Enterprise Security helped improve my organization's business resilience. It's a pretty powerful tool. We can monitor and ingest all the data, only if it's not encrypted.
Splunk platform helps consolidate networking, security, and IT observability tools. We watch all that information on just one platform, so that's pretty cool.
What is most valuable?
The risk-based alerting (RBA) is one of the valuable features. It's a really cool concept to explain and see the impact that you're having on the company.
Splunk Enterprise Security's ability to find security events across different environments, whether in the cloud, on-premise, or hybrid, is really good. Because it gives me a lot of content out of the box, the only thing I need to do is ingest the data, and I'm good to go.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see the asset and identity lookups be more automatic and less manual. I have to search everything and type it. So it should be more user-friendly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is really good. It's very accessible.
How are customer service and support?
Most of the time, some docs are not available. When you see the documents, they add a link, we go to the link but it's not available.
Also, the customer service and support have a lot of old questions that are not updated.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
It's pretty easy. The first thing you need to do is the onboarding phase. After that, you need to review that the logs that you're receiving are good. And after that, you need to start working with the correlation searches and setting up everything.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment was done internally.
What was our ROI?
We have definitely seen an ROI. It is worth it!
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is always going to be different because it depends on the project you are working on and how much data you are going to ingest. But it's definitely worth it.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We directly chose Splunk to begin with.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. There are a few things that need to be more automatic because there's still a lot of manual work to use it.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
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Updated: December 2025
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