Splunk Enterprise Security Reviews

We're using the solution to try to build a virtual network and put Splunk inside it and do some kind of transcentralization with a log server. Our aim is to track connections, network traffic and some personal databases. I'm the founder of the company and we are customers of Splunk.

Splunk can quickly be deployed and it's not difficult to learn the solution. 

The solution could be more user friendly and it's difficult to know at this stage whether our requirements will be met by the solution. 

I've been using this solution for a couple of months. 

The solution is stable. 

Scalability is good with Splunk. 

The initial setup doesn't take much time especially if there's good bandwidth. In a small company deployment might take a month or two. If you have 100 devices then a technical team of three should be sufficient. They would need to be able to deal with log analysis, forensics and have general knowledge about admin systems. In time, we would expect to have thousands of users. 

I think Splunk is expensive compared to other tools at the purchase stage. It's possible that if we can keep control of the costs involved down the track, it won't be so bad.

We studied four or five tools including Logrhythm and Exabeam. We went with Splunk for now and will see how that goes.

I think this is a good solution and rate it a seven out of 10. 

I use this solution for data visualization.

The most valuable features of the solution are it is straightforward to use and the documentation is good for finding out how to get the data you are looking for.

The solution could improve by making it more business analysis oriented. The way it is now is designed more for developers.

I have been using Splunk for two weeks.

The solution is stable, I have not experienced any bugs or glitches.

The solution is scalable and it is a requirement of my company to have scalable solutions.

I have used previously Qlik Sense and Kibana.

I did the training with Slunk and once I had the training the installation was easy.

I have evaluated Tableau.

My advice to others is not to be intimidated by the solution and to give it a try. It will become easier over time.

I rate Splunk an eight out of ten.

Because I'm security focused, I prefer the security features such as Splunk Phantom and Splunk Enterprise Security.

We need to get a Splunk Cloud instance inside South Africa's borders. At this stage, we are pushing Splunk Cloud, but it is not yet within South Africa's borders. So we've got data sovereignty issues, especially with government organizations.

Technical support could be improved as well.

Splunk can be an expensive solution. I think that they need to change their pricing model. At present, it is based on the number of gigabytes that you ingest into the Splunk system. Their competitors are now starting with a pricing model where you pay per device talking back. If Splunk could have a similar alternative, it would then allow people to choose the data model they want such as set data or a set number of devices.

I have been using Splunk for three years.

The technical support here in South Africa hasn't been great, but I understand why as we make up less than 3% of Splunk's total revenue in the world.

The initial setup isn't overly complex, but it's not easy either.

The pricing model is based on the number of gigabytes that you ingest into the Splunk system. So it can be an expensive solution.

Plan your requirements properly from the beginning so that you can get the most value in a shorter space of time.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Splunk at six.

Its integration is most valuable. Its UI is also pretty much easy.

Its setup is a little bit complex for a distributed environment. 

Their support can also be better. If we raise a case with Splunk support and by any chance we missed to respond for more than a week, they usually close the case. Sometimes, it can take us more than a week to reply. In that case What they can do is they can send a followup mail before closing.

I have been using this solution for a year now.

It is very stable haven't encounter any glitches or bugs till now.

It is very much scalable. I am acting as an admin, and we have more than a hundred users of this solution in our company. We use it on a regular basis. We currently don't have any plan to increase its usage.

I would rate them an eight out of ten. Their response speed is okay, but if, by any chance, we miss the response for more than a week, they usually close the case. Sometimes, it can take us more than a week to reply.

This is the only solution that we have been using.

Its setup is pretty much easy for standalone, but for a distributed environment, it is a little bit complex.

I would recommend this solution to others, but it should meet their needs and architecture.

I would rate Splunk a nine out of ten.

It provides a lot of analytics with the underlying AI engine, and it is a lot easier than other solutions. There are some products that do automated AI-based detection and drawing up charts, but for network monitoring and all of the monitoring aspects, it is quite a nice tool.

It is very convenient for business users because they get more or less a lot of data readily available. If you're familiar with the Splunk query language, you can pretty much do whatever you want.

If you have to do your own stuff, such as customized charts, it is a little bit more work, but once you're familiar with the Splunk query language, you can pretty much do whatever you want. In terms of features, it should probably have the features that other competitors provide.

I have been using this solution for about three to four months.

I'm not sure. I do not really throw a lot of data in it, but it has been authenticated very nicely. It manages indexes and all of these things very nicely. I have not been privy to any production systems where you have millions of lines of log coming in every second. It works very well for the data that I have. It should be able to handle a lot of data. That's the whole purpose of it, and that's why Splunk has become so popular. It is an enterprise monitoring tool, and a lot of customers have Splunk in their ecosystem.

They have pretty much good documentation and good training. Their documentation is a lot better than Qlik Sense.

Splunk is an enterprise monitoring tool. Qlik Sense can do a little bit of log monitoring, but it is mostly used for dashboard reporting, whereas Splunk is more around monitoring and figuring out threats and all such things. They are different, but both deal with the data and allow you to create operation reports. 

Power BI is another tool that a lot of our customers use, but Splunk is quite often requested. It is also a lot more popular than Qlik Sense. We have a fair number of Qlik Sense customers.  

We usually sell Blue Prism to business users who are more concerned with the reporting aspect, which is why they would like to have easy tools like Qlik Sense in their ecosystem, but on the infrastructure side, it would be Splunk for enterprise monitoring.

Simple environments are easier to install. Because there is a lot of data log monitoring, once you have a production system, there is some amount of work in setting it up, especially making it SSL Secure and exposing it on the internet. There are multiple components behind it, so you need to ensure that all these things are set up correctly. These kinds of things are not required on a cloud platform because you are just uploading data. You really don't have much access to the backend.

Splunk also has a cloud version, which I haven't looked at, but I have used Qlik Sense's cloud platforms. With on-premises, you are in control of pretty much how you set up all the data that you are sending out. A lot of our customers have the issue that if it is a cloud platform, they cannot really send out the data to any of these cloud platforms. So, there are data residence and other issues.

It is economical than other solutions.

I would definitely recommend Splunk. It is quite a decent tool, and it is there in a lot of enterprises.

I would rate Splunk an eight out of ten.

Security. We have built SIEM solutions three times from the ground up (not ES) using Splunk for some of the largest companies in the world.

Out clients went from unhappy using inflexible, poorly-supported products (in some cases barely functionally) to confident and excited when using Splunk. Not only are they able to do their security jobs and investigations, but they are also easily able to modify and evolve their implementations themselves to keep up with the shifting sands, which is the SecOps landscape.

• Core Splunk
• Saved searches
• Dashboards (SimpleXML) 

With good domain knowledge, one can build almost anything. If you throw in Alert Manager or an integration with ServiceNow. Then, you have your own SIEM.

• It needs integration with a configuration management solution. 
• It could use better password management for forwarders. 
• It needs a better way to export dynamic views without requiring a ton of code and user/pw.

Almost 10 years.

Unfortunately, lately every release has a new memory leak.  Be SURE to upgrade late and READ THE RELEASE NOTES, especially the "Known Issues" section.

We only ever have issues when deployed on VMs and the VM admins do not do what we tell them to do which is EXCLUSIVELY RESERVE OUR RESOURCES.

It used to be great (but perhaps that was because my employer at the time was a key prospect in a vertical where Splunk had no customers) but Splunk support is definitely a victim of Splunk's explosive growth.  The first tier support is as bad as it is most places and getting worse all the time.  If you KNOW your problem is not run of the mill, ask for escalation immediately.  Also the clock on the case does not start until somebody adds a note to the case so always call in and ask if they got your diag file (always attach a diag) and the person who answers will have to add a note to the case which will start the clock.

I have dabbled with LogRythm and ArcSight and they are both OK, but Time-To-Value is WAY shorter with Splunk, IMHO.

Use bare metal severs on Linux and you will be fine.  Use Windows and you will have much trouble.  Use VMs and your admins will cheat you and you will have much trouble.  Do not use NAS!!!!

In-house.  We at Splunxter are Splunk experts.  We can do anything with Splunk.  We always hit homeruns.

We usually get multi X-factor within a quarter.

Get free PS if you can (ask) or USE THE DOCS.  The documentation will get you to success.  If you are not getting more value out of Splunk than the license you are paying, then you are doing something wrong and should spend a tiny bit more to get a consultant like Splunxter.com to help you.

No,we went with the free trial and got so much value so quickly we bought in.

You can also get GREAT help at answers.splunk.com.

We have multiple use cases, almost 200 plus use cases. An example, travel activities where you log in.

The solution has plenty of features that are good.

I have been using the solution for two years.

It is a stable solution. 

In my experience, it has been scalable. We have five users using the solution in our company.

The installation is straightforward.

Deployment is not difficult but the lock sources and configurations can take time. We have a team of 15 technicians that do the deployments.

The solution is a little expensive.

I would recommend this solution.

I rate Splunk a six out of ten.

I'm the CSSP manager and we are customers of Splunk. 

Splunk is good at log collection and log management.

I'm a security manager and Splunk is not a good solution for my needs and not as good as other products I've used. I really think they just overreached and are marketing the solution as something that it really isn't. It's really not an SIEM product. It's really not a monitoring solution. If Splunk wants to get into SIEM, they need to make a totally new product. They should just leave SIEM, it's not their thing, not what they do. They're good at log collection and indexing. Stick to it. There are some things with log collection and log retention capabilities that they could actually improve instead of trying to create products for all these other different areas. I don't want their next release, I would rather just kind of scale back on some of the extras, and just really focus on log collection and log retention. I'd like to have more options on how I can perform those features with their products. I'd like to see a lot more integration with other products.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

Once you set up the solution, you don't really have to worry about it. It's very stable. I like the fact that you can pretty much just patch the OS, and it doesn't really affect how Splunk runs. With a lot of products, you almost have to wait for that company to implement a new patch or version of the product before you can upgrade the server it's on, or anything like that. Or you can't upgrade, you just have to go with whatever they give you, because they're giving you an appliance or something. I like the fact that Splunk allows you to integrate and still run as Splunk and still be compliant with most vulnerabilities out there without affecting functionality.

The solution is extremely scalable. We probably have about five or six users, so all our system administrators use it, they're the ones that implement it. Right now, just the CIO, the CTO, and there's a ISSM who has access. There are plans to add more people once we fully implement the Enterprise Security solution. We have admins responsible for maintenance.

The initial setup is kind of complex but I think it's an issue we have and not connected to the solution. We're still deploying. The company didn't have an implementation strategy, they're kind of just flying by the seat of their pants which wasn't a great plan. We're doing it ourselves, we didn't use an integrator. 

We have a 100 gig annual license. I'm not sure of the cost. Their licensing is based on the amount of data you collect. There is an additional cost for Enterprise Security. If there are any other kind of applications, the APIs that we created that we want to add, there are costs for most of those as well. Their pricing structure really could use a revamp. They really need to review and look at that and see if there's a better way that they can do it. Elasticsearch is a little cheaper and a better product in my view. 

It's important to prepare. You can't just get a solution and start to implement it. A big part of that needs to be preparation, and in IT, we're not great at that. I would go with Elastic, a similar product but better. The licensing is a little different but it gives you a little more freedom to do things. It's really flexible with what you can do and versatile in how you can use it. Splunk is still top when it comes to log collection. If you wanted anything more than that, you should probably look into using several different products. There isn't really one product that you're going to find that's going to give you that coverage and I just like the versatility of using several different products. There are some other things you can use that actually do a better job at the correlation part. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10.