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Amit Moralwar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Provides a user-friendly GUI, and reduces manual work, but the playbooks have room for improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "Splunk SOAR's extensive library of pre-built integrations allows it to connect with a vast array of popular security and IT applications, streamlining workflows across our existing security stack."
  • "Various aspects of the playbook development process itself can be optimized."

What is our primary use case?

I use Splunk SOAR to create automation for our SOC team. These automations integrate with third-party applications, which is a key requirement for our SOC.

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk makes creating playbooks simple with its GUI. We can build playbooks by dragging and dropping different elements, eliminating the need for complex coding.

The visibility of the playbook viewer is good. We can add custom code while developing the playbook if required.

Splunk SOAR provides end-to-end visibility into our environment.

Troubleshooting our cloud-native environment with Splunk SOAR is a breeze thanks to its intuitive graphical interface. Unlike traditional tools requiring command lines, Splunk SOAR lets us manage integrations and cloud access entirely within the user-friendly GUI, streamlining the process.

Splunk SOAR has significantly reduced our manual workload by automating many previously time-consuming processes. We only began to see the full benefits after about five months.

Splunk simplifies security investigations by offering pre-built processes and leveraging the rich functionality embedded within Phantom's alerts. This combination provides a powerful toolkit for investigators.

Splunk SOAR has significantly improved our security alert resolution efficiency. While the specific time saved depends on the individual case, we've seen a general reduction in resolution time from around 20 minutes to five minutes thanks to the variety of use cases it supports.

Splunk has reduced our mean time to detection by 15 minutes.

Our mean time to resolution is now down to five minutes.

Splunk SOAR streamlined our security operations by consolidating multiple tools. We've successfully integrated and replaced approximately 15 individual applications into a more unified environment.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the third-party integrations and the playbook development that can be done using Python.

Splunk SOAR's extensive library of pre-built integrations allows it to connect with a vast array of popular security and IT applications, streamlining workflows across our existing security stack. This includes tools like Salesforce, Microsoft Outlook, and abuseIP, empowering our organization's SOC and security teams to leverage these familiar applications within SOAR's automation and orchestration capabilities.

What needs improvement?

Playbooks offer significant room for improvement, as custom code is often required during development. Various aspects of the playbook development process itself can be optimized.

Buyer's Guide
Splunk SOAR
July 2025
Learn what your peers think about Splunk SOAR. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk SOAR for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Splunk SOAR is extremely stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk SOAR is scalable to our needs.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk SOAR five out of ten.

Early on, we encountered some issues automating tasks with playbooks. However, a recent Splunk version upgrade resolved those problems.

We have 50 users spread across different regions.

The resilience of Splunk SOAR is great.

A thorough evaluation of the SOAR landscape is recommended to identify the best fit for your needs. If Splunk aligns with your requirements after this assessment, it can be a strong option.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Principal Security Engineer at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Integrates well, and uses custom Python code, but the UI has room for improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The best feature is the integration and the custom Python code that we can write. Splunk SOAR provides us with both of these capabilities, allowing us to integrate different security solutions with Splunk SOAR and take remediation actions directly on those security tools."
  • "There is a lot of room for improvement with the UI."

What is our primary use case?

We utilize Splunk SOAR to automate our incident response process. I am the sole engineer in my current organization, responsible for working on Splunk to automate the incident response process followed by our team. This involves investigating various incident response procedures established within our security operations center.

The main problem we want to solve is the time it takes to invoice tickets and remediate incidents. Therefore, we aim to reduce that time. If our analysts manually handle and investigate each incident, it will take longer compared to using this solution, which automates most of the processes. Whenever an incident occurs, the playbook and Splunk automatically initiate the necessary actions to gather the required data, enabling the analyst to make informed decisions and address the incident promptly.

How has it helped my organization?

Creating a playbook using the Solutions Playbook Editor, is relatively easy if we possess some knowledge of Python code and the ability to write various types of flow diagrams.

The visibility of the solution's playbook viewer is excellent. There is adequate documentation that assists individuals in learning how to utilize the playbook to construct solutions.

Splunk SOAR's ability to integrate with other systems and applications in our environment is straightforward. It has numerous capabilities to integrate with various security tools, as it supports open APIs. If the solution supports the API, we only need to write the corresponding APIs in the pipeline code and utilize those API tools to construct the integration, enabling us to take action accordingly.

The most significant improvement I have observed is time-saving in the Security Operations Center incidents. We receive approximately a thousand to eleven hundred incidents per day, and if we were to manually investigate these incidents, we would require a team of ten to twelve people. However, by utilizing Splunk SOAR, we are able to handle the investigation of these thousand alerts with just six or seven people.

Splunk SOAR is not difficult to use in an investigation; it depends on the use case. I haven't encountered any issues with the implementation of the case solution, and there don't seem to be any limitations in that regard.

Splunk SOAR assists us in reducing the volume of security events. Whenever an incident occurs, the playbook initiates actions simultaneously with its generation in our security operations center. These incidents are automatically handled by the playbook, while incidents requiring manual intervention are assigned to our analysts. All other incidents are handled automatically through Splunk SOAR playbooks. Splunk SOAR has reduced the security event volume by forty-five percent.

Our mean time to detect has been drastically reduced. Before Splunk SOAR our security operation center, analysts worked on a queue. Whenever an alert was received, it was placed in a queue, and the incidents were investigated one by one. However, with the implementation of Splunk SOAR, we now have instant knowledge and analysts can start investigating more effectively. The required data is already gathered by the playbook itself, aiding analysts in making more accurate decisions in less time. This has resulted in a reduction of our mean time to detection by at least eighty percent. Previously, without Splunk SOAR, we experienced significant mean time to detect because analysts had to focus on one incident at a time, leaving other incidents waiting. Now, there is no need for incidents to wait for an analyst to take over. The playbook automatically gathers the data, allowing the analyst to have all the necessary information as soon as they start, enabling them to make prompt decisions.

Splunk SOAR has helped reduce our mean time to resolve. The resolution of incidents sometimes depends on different teams that need to investigate and send notifications for action. However, the notification of those incidents has been significantly reduced, and we can confidently say that we have achieved a fifty percent reduction in our mean time to resolve.

Fifty percent of our IT staff's time is saved through using Splunk SOAR, and we can utilize that time to work on the other project we have.

Splunk SOAR has saved our organization forty-five percent of our time.

What is most valuable?

The best feature is the integration and the custom Python code that we can write. Splunk SOAR provides us with both of these capabilities, allowing us to integrate different security solutions with Splunk SOAR and take remediation actions directly on those security tools. Additionally, we can write our own Python code, which can be used and embedded in a Splunk SOAR playbook, enabling us to utilize that code directly within the solution itself.

What needs improvement?

There is a lot of room for improvement with the UI. 

I would like to have more integrations with cloud technologies and functionalities such as AI within Splunk SOAR.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk SOAR for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Splunk SOAR is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk SOAR is a hundred percent scalable.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward and took approximately three hours. Four individuals from our network team and one individual from the Splunk personal service team were required for the deployment as we needed to configure the server.

What was our ROI?

We have observed approximately a forty-five percent return on investment with Splunk SOAR.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Splunk SOAR is more expensive compared to other options for SOAR.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We assessed various open-source options prior to choosing Splunk SOAR, such as Securonix SOAR and Shuffle.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk SOAR a seven out of ten. The solution necessitates expertise in Python coding, which is challenging to find in individuals. Additionally, Splunk SOAR lacks sufficient AI integration.

Before using Splunk SOAR, it took us approximately six hours to block certain IPs on our firewalls. However, after implementing Splunk SOAR, we were able to accomplish the same task within just five minutes.

We deployed Splunk SOAR on a single server.

We have around nine people that use Splunk SOAR in our organization.

Maintenance is sometimes required based on the incident volume we receive. If we experience a higher volume, we need to maintain the RAM and other components in our server. Therefore, it is important for us to exercise caution in this regard.

I highly recommend Splunk SOAR for individuals seeking to automate the incident response process in their security operation centers.

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: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Splunk SOAR
July 2025
Learn what your peers think about Splunk SOAR. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer2499567 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Automation Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Top 20
Helps improve our business resilience, reduce our MTTR, and save time overall
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the Splunk SOAR apps and playbooks."
  • "Providing Splunk app developers and playbook developers Python Stub files so that way when they create custom code through their IDE, they can have IntelliCode suggestions."

What is our primary use case?

My use case for Splunk SOAR is security automation.

We are running a Splunk SOAR cluster. Three nodes in three different environments in a dev-test and prod environment.

How has it helped my organization?

The SOC team has been much less burdened since implementing Splunk SOAR. They're able to completely automate away some events. At the very least, they get so much information gathered from our automated actions that they're able to almost immediately take action if action isn't already taken by the playbooks that are being run.

Splunk SOAR has helped reduce our mean time to resolve. It has reduced, for example, ten-minute investigations into 30-second ones. Sometimes all our analysts need is a little bit of context, and they can immediately make a decision based on that. There are some events that we have where normally investigating them would take about ten minutes. We get a ton of those a day. I did the math and Splunk SOAR saves over 70 hours a week, which is massive. That savings is only for those types of events alone. In that context, it is a huge improvement.

Splunk SOAR has helped improve our business resilience. It's an extremely powerful tool. I do think that the ability it has depends on the people implementing it, though. The implementation needs to be good. If it's not, that's not Splunk SOAR's fault, that's the organization's fault. If they do it right, it is incredible.

Splunk SOAR has saved us time with alert triage. Even on simple events that might take ten minutes, we're taking that down by around 95 percent. Almost all events can at least have some sort of automation that saves minutes and every minute counts and saves us so much time.

Splunk SOAR has saved us time in threat response.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the Splunk SOAR apps and playbooks. I am a Splunk SOAR developer, and my job is to make sure that integrations with third-party systems are done well. I give guidelines for how to properly make Splunk SOAR apps. These two features are essential in how the apps will work.

What needs improvement?

One area for improvement in Splunk SOAR is version control for Splunk apps. Currently, for Splunk playbooks, we can hook up a Splunk store to a Git repository with playbooks in it, and it will pull them down periodically, which is amazing. Splunk apps don't have that, and that would be extremely helpful because we do custom coding a lot. There are many vendors out there. And because there isn't source control, we need to emulate that same behavior, which causes us to do other things. For example, we need to create a Git repository somewhere on SOAR and create a clone job that periodically runs a Git pull action. After that, we bring all that SOAR data into that repository. We need to have a Git Hook that automatically tars the app we just created and then uses the API to automatically upload it. Because of that, now we have this app data that's being doubled up because we have SOAR apps in the Apps directory on the back end of Splunk SOAR, and we also have this Git repository, which holds all the same information. That could be highly simplified, and that is a big gap that would make my life and probably other developers' a lot easier. 

There is a specific situation that comes into place when we have a Splunk SOAR cluster we have to work with. If we also don't have it hooked up to an external Splunk Enterprise instance, trying to debug what's going on in the cluster is extremely difficult because there are 45 different log locations. That could be extremely difficult to try and find out what is going on with all the microservices that are being used in a Splunk SOAR cluster. I had to personally develop a tool to be able to monitor all those logs at once and then parse it out and query that log once we're done with whatever operation so that we can get a clear picture of what's going on in the SOAR cluster, which has been immensely helpful, taking hours off of debugging time to do that. It would be nice to have a tool like that natively available in Splunk SOAR to begin with. Even without the cluster, I believe it's over 30 log sources that could go wrong. 

Providing Splunk app developers and playbook developers Python Stub files so that way when they create custom code through their IDE, they can have IntelliCode suggestions. It could be dangerous for someone who is coding to constantly have to look back at the documentation and not see, for example, a Python dictionary where they are expecting it. In reality, it's a list, that could cause errors when a playbook runs or when an app runs, and that could be a potential incident that now goes unresolved or a serious issue. That's dangerous. Providing SOAR app developers with some Python Stub files that they can use for IntelliCode suggestions would also be helpful. Also having slight changes to the way that it's expected to create custom modifications to already existing apps on GitHub or Splunk base by essentially inheriting from the base app when we want to have custom modifications, and developers should have to explicitly override any methods from the base class that's there. That way, we're not modifying any of the underlying layers of the base app that's there. We could also hook it up to a Git Repository to receive those updates into the base app and then the custom app. This way we have these custom app features, we have all these extra things being put into it, still on the custom app end so we can have our features and the base app all in one. I think that'd be a novel solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk SOAR for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

As a standalone instance, SOAR is extremely stable. I don't have any issues with it. The only reason there might be an issue is if we lack resources on the hardware itself, and that's more of a problem from an architecting, and engineering perspective, not exactly Splunk SOAR. When it comes to the Splunk SOAR cluster, it is pretty complicated. There are five different microservices, and if we have an issue there, we have 45 different log sources to get that info from, and it can be hard to debug it. If we have a problem, it can be hard to diagnose which microservice we might be having issues with.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Splunk SOAR scales well though when we get to I believe, more than five nodes in a Splunk SOAR cluster, it becomes a little bit unwieldy, and it takes long for things to happen. If we need to update something in the cluster, things can get slow and we have been told by professional services to try and keep it at three nodes because anything more than that is unwieldy as they have said. I believe that is a known issue with Splunk SOAR.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support from Splunk has been good. Whenever we need to engage in professional services, they're always able to give us new information that we did not explicitly know, or they're able to validate what we need. Usually, when we talk to professional services of some kind, which is the main form of customer service I think that we use, it's usually quick and to the point in exactly what we need, which is fantastic. There have been times when we requested professional services, something we needed, and that was developed in-shop just for us, which is fantastic. The tool that was made to remove SOAR cluster nodes was requested by us, and then it became a feature later on. So that was amazing and helpful.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment was extremely easy as a stand-alone instance. It's a straightforward process, especially for someone like me who has had to set up other servers containing security tools on them. In terms of setting up a cluster, I unfortunately haven't had experience setting up a cluster explicitly. I have had experience removing nodes from a cluster and with a new tool that was released, I believe, in version 6.0. It was made easier. When it comes to deploying Spunk SOAR, involves downloading the tarball, extracting it, running the pre-install script to ensure proper configuration, and then running the installation script. As long as system resources are sufficient, the installation itself should be quick despite the application's size.

What was our ROI?

The biggest metric that I've seen as a developer admin and DevOps engineer is the time saved. I don't think that on our end, we have set up the ROI functionality in SOAR yet, but I know that the timing has been massive. We should get it set up in  SOAR that way the customers see the value.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk SOAR nine out of ten. It's a fantastic product it needs a few more features to make it amazing. The clustering does need to be simplified a bit. Version controlling for apps and making app development just a little bit easier for developers would take it to the next level. There's no other SOAR product that does what Splunk SOAR does as well. All other SOAR are frankly inferior, but it just needs that little bit of extra functionality to make it a truly great product.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partners
PeerSpot user
reviewer2499171 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Analyst II at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Saves a lot of time and the mobile app makes it easy for our analysts to get alerted and respond
Pros and Cons
  • "Surprisingly, the mobile app is valuable because it is very convenient for our on-call analysts to respond and get alerted to security alerts and events wherever they are. We are able to harness the power of Splunk SOAR and everything that we are doing, and we are also able to alert our on-call analysts 24/7. From their mobile phone, they can respond to those alerts."
  • "Unfortunately, not all of our analysts are iPhone users or iOS users. The mobile app is only supported on iOS. Our analysts who have Android do not have that benefit. That would be a nice thing to have so that we can have it across the board and not just for iOS."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is for our Security Operation Center. We use it for automation and responding to some of our cybersecurity alerts. It is being used for performance enrichment and automation on those events.

We do not use Splunk SOAR to predict things or try to predict things that can happen in the future. We are mainly using it to respond to things. It is more for responding to events that have happened.

How has it helped my organization?

We implemented Splunk SOAR because we had a lot of repetitive tasks that our analysts do. In our area, it was hard, and it still is hard, to find cybersecurity graduates and analysts, so any time that we can save for our analysts can be better spent.

There has been a lot of time-saving which equals to dollars-savings for the company. We have a lot of automation of repetitive tasks and things like that. We do not have to do things manually, so it saves a lot of time for our analysts. It is hard to measure the time savings because we are always developing or trying to develop new things. We are not that far along. We have been using it for three years but we have used it in production for maybe a year and a half. There is a big learning curve, so I am still learning. 

Our cloud endeavors are still in their infancy phase. We have not even started to look at that part yet. For our on-prem environment, there is definitely an advantage. There are a lot of features and capabilities not only from a security perspective. We have real-time alerting based on the system downtime and certain logs that are collected and things like that. I am sure we can apply it to the cloud infrastructure in the future as well.

We have definitely saved a lot of time with the things that we have automated. We have probably saved the amount of one analyst in a year.

In terms of Splunk SOAR's impact on our organization’s business resilience, it is on the way to getting there. This year and next year, we will definitely set that stage. We have some initiatives that are just starting that would definitely put us into that area. We have not crossed that bridge yet.

Splunk's unified platform has helped consolidate networking, security, and IT observability tools. A simple example is the ability to use SOAR integrations and API integrations in all the different tool sets that we have. Our analysts can use those tools from Splunk instead of having to log in to each one of those tool sets to do things. It is saving a lot of time as well for our analysts.

What is most valuable?

Surprisingly, the mobile app is valuable because it is very convenient for our on-call analysts to respond and get alerted to security alerts and events wherever they are. We are able to harness the power of Splunk SOAR and everything that we are doing, and we are also able to alert our on-call analysts 24/7. From their mobile phone, they can respond to those alerts. They do not necessarily have to have a laptop with them. That is one of the most convenient features or parts of Splunk SOAR that we use. This type of integration with the mobile app is not very common.

What needs improvement?

Unfortunately, not all of our analysts are iPhone users or iOS users. The mobile app is only supported on iOS. Our analysts who have Android do not have that benefit. That would be a nice thing to have so that we can have it across the board and not just for iOS.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk SOAR for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. It is pretty rare that it goes down. It crashed just once last week.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is an aspect that we have not yet explored. We have a single instance on-prem.

How are customer service and support?

From my experience, Splunk support has always been top-notch. I would rate them a nine out of ten. One point that is missing is because of the bad experience that we had while starting out with Phantom. It was hard for the support to assist us. There were definitely some breakdowns in communication that resulted in delays.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before SOAR, it was called Phantom. It was the same thing, and then they changed the name of it. We did not use any other solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

It was a pretty rocky start. That was when it was Phantom, and there were a lot of problems. I had a lot of problems with Phantom. A lot of that was why we had hesitation with renewing Splunk SOAR. A lot of the problems were related to bad code and poor instructions and guidance. Some of it was things that we may not have done right, but a lot of it was related to code. It definitely got off to a rocky start. It was not as smooth as we anticipated the whole thing to be. 

Our environment is on-prem. We have some things in AWS, but I am not privy to the cloud aspect.

What about the implementation team?

We deployed Phantom ourselves.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We renewed it this year. This year was the first time there was a dramatic increase in the price. It was kind of non-negotiable. It was just a high increase. We had internal communications, and it was definitely a surprise to us. In a short time frame, we renewed it this year. Prices are going up everywhere, but they are not always justifiable, at least not to our eyes. The pricing this year was definitely a big shock.

Instead of a gradual increase from time to time, it was just a big sticker shock increase. The price is never going to decrease again. I am not saying it was justifiable or not, but the message that was relayed to us and the unwillingness to negotiate at least to a more reasonable number were surprising.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The only one that we pursued was a product called Siemplify which has been bought out by Google since then. Our primary reason for going with Splunk SOAR was that we were already a Splunk customer. It made sense to wrap Splunk SOAR into that as well. We use Splunk ES. With Siemplify, the integration piece was lacking just because it was not a Splunk product.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk SOAR a ten out of ten, especially as compared to other options out there, such as XSOAR and Siemplify. A lot of my decision is based on the fact that we were already a Splunk customer, so the integration was beneficial.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Nagendra Nekkala. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager ICT & at Bangalore International Airport Limited
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Helps with visibility, offers helpful playbooks, and has good automation
Pros and Cons
  • "It helps increase efficiency and productivity."
  • "The number of playbooks on offer should be increased."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for security automation. It's used to investigate and remediate threats.

How has it helped my organization?

Normally, we would have to manually investigate events. However, with Splunk, everything is automatically investigated. 

What is most valuable?

The playbooks are great. They are very useful. We can define rules, including what the remediation should be. Everything gets clearly defined. You can set up different types of automation. It helps increase efficiency and productivity.

The solution provides us with end-to-end visibility.

It's easy to visualize and troubleshoot our cloud-native environment using Splunk. There's simple product management and quick detection and response that helps minimize risks. I can handle continuous monitoring from an operation control center. 

We can integrate with other systems. It's helped minimize incident tickets and my overall response time has been lowered. We began to realize benefits within three to four months of deployment. 

Splunk is very easy to use during an investigation. It's very straightforward. 

We've been able to reduce our security event volume by 50%. We've also been able to reduce our mean time to detect by about 25%. It's helped us save time and consolidate tools in our environment so that we can minimize staff appropriately. The automation makes all of this possible.

What needs improvement?

The number of playbooks on offer should be increased. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution has consistently been stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have about 300 people using the solution. It's scalable. We may increase usage in the future. We want to get the enterprise license. 

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been good. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not previously use a different solution. 

How was the initial setup?

It was easy to implement the solution. It took our team about four months to be trained on how to use the playbooks. 

We had two people managing the deployment process. One handled configuration, and the other handled integration. 

No maintenance is required for the product once implemented. 

What about the implementation team?

We handled the implementation in-house. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm not aware of the exact pricing. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other options. 

What other advice do I have?

It's a valuable solution. It enables SIEM capabilities. We're able to orchestrate when events are happening, and this minimizes event tickets. We are able to handle security challenges while gaining good visibility.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

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.
PeerSpot user
Shubham Sinha. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Principal Information Security Analyst at Veritas Technologies LLC
Real User
Top 20
Helped eliminate repetitive and redundant tasks, but custom functions and reporting need a lot of work
Pros and Cons
  • "When you design a playbook, you can integrate multiple log sources and define rules... After that, the platform automatically compiles all these activities and, based on the results, the analyst only has to indicate whether the result is a true or false positive. That reduces the time and effort involved."
  • "Suppose I am initially granted user rights or analyst rights, but later on, I also get admin rights. SOAR is unable to amend the limitations of my role. I raised a support ticket with Splunk about this. They said it's a bug in their 5.3.5 version. To fix this, I had to reinstall the entire platform from scratch.."

What is our primary use case?

I'm using it mainly for SOC automation and reporting. It's for incident and threat modeling, incident reporting, and triage.

I come from a cybersecurity background and I used to work on the tickets for the security alerts we received from various sources, including Splunk and other SIEM tools. The major challenge was that we were occupied with a lot of noise and activities like validation of IP reports, DNS checks, and traffic monitoring. These were redundant activities that every analyst had to do. We wanted to stop these kinds of activities. 

How has it helped my organization?

Splunk SOAR has multiple integrations with various tools, such as VirusTotal. Once we purchased those tools from the respective owners and automated them, the kinds of redundant activities we were having to do were almost immediately stopped.

Also, the ingestion of multiple log sources together helped us eliminate false positives. Using the SOAR platform, our monthly alert count was reduced from 1,100 to 200 or 250. That was the best impact we have seen from implementing SOAR in our environment.

It has reduced our mean time to detect and mean time to respond, from 20 to 30 minutes to just 5 to 10 minutes. In cybersecurity, every moment can be a ticking time bomb for us. We need to get to a solution immediately, whenever any incident is triggered in our environment. SOAR has helped us a lot.

Using this platform has resulted in a better work-life balance for my team.

What is most valuable?

One of the features I like most is playbook creation, and custom functions are another. 

When you design a playbook, you can integrate multiple log sources and define rules. That used to be done by the analysts by going to the respective tools and doing tasks manually. Now, with playbook design, writing down those rules is a one-time activity that a SOAR admin has to do. After that, the platform automatically compiles all these activities and, based on the results, the analyst only has to indicate whether the result is a true or false positive. That reduces the time and effort involved. Our KPIs have greatly improved. An incident that used to take 15 to 20 minutes, was reduced to five minutes. This helped us speed up our response to any alert, whether it was a true positive or false positive.

Another of the best parts of the SOAR platform is its ability to integrate with other systems and applications. It provides API integrations and, through them, I can limit the rights for the tool, which is good. If I want to integrate any of the applications with CrowdStrike, but only for incident-review policies or just to review the work automation, I can grant rights only for those purposes. That is one of the best features available in SOAR. It is very easy to implement and very user-friendly.

What needs improvement?

The visibility of the solution’s playbook viewer depends on the right you assign to the analyst. SOAR has the flexibility to distinguish between the roles of analyst and owner. If the analyst's role is to just work on a ticket, they cannot view the playbook design platform. That is limited to the owner. That can be both a good and bad thing.

A major problem I have faced in SOAR's rights distribution is roles and responsibilities. Suppose I am initially granted user rights or analyst rights, but later on, I also get admin rights. SOAR is unable to amend the limitations of my role. I raised a support ticket with Splunk about this. They said it's a bug in their 5.3.5 version. To fix this, I had to reinstall the entire platform from scratch, just to amend the rights and responsibilities of one role. This bug was not fixed.

Also, the latest GUI is terrible. The previous one was better.

Another point is that while using Splunk SOAR in an investigation is not difficult, there are some complex parameters. We have SOAR case management, but the licensing is going to put a big hole in your pocket. Also, there is an issue with investigation node addition. When you are doing node additions you cannot grant the entire environment to have SOAR visibility into the incident. So when you integrate it with an ITSM tool, like ServiceNow or Jira for ticketing purposes, there is a challenge. When you do nodes for investigation on a regular basis, sometimes it does not update our ServiceNow platform, which is terrible. It is a redundant activity for an analyst to update that in the case management as well as in the ITSM tool. Although SOAR provides integration, the functionality of investigation and nodes is terrible when it comes to integration.

An additional area for improvement is custom function creation. It's terrible. A newbie cannot create custom functions right away. They would require a solid understanding first.

Also, the reporting is really awful. If I want to do a report for a customized time period, such as the last three days or the last four days, or from the 10th to the 12th of June, that is not available in SOAR at all. That kind of feature is available in Cortex XSOAR. Reporting is a real challenge.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk SOAR for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a stable environment. I don't have any complaints about it in terms of its stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Aside from the issue I described where I started with an analyst's role in the solution and then was granted an admin role but the privileges remained those of an analyst, and I had to reinstall the entire platform, overall, the scalability is good.

How are customer service and support?

We have contacted their tech support many times. They are readily available if I raise a P-1 ticket, because SOAR is not something we can work without. Their support is good and more capable than the SME we hired.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before SOAR was purchased by Splunk, it was named Phantom and that is what I have worked with most of the time. I have also worked on Demisto, which is now Palo Alto Cortex XSOAR. That was a bit more user-friendly compared to Splunk SOAR.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment of SOAR is very complex. In my previous company, the deployment took me almost 10 days, and that was with a Splunk SME sitting with us. We paid them money to have the SME, but even he was unable to do what we needed to be done. Later on, we raised a support ticket with them and there were multiple escalations from our upper management to the Splunk management team. They then sent a good technical guy and he fixed the issue within five minutes. Before that, we were unable to do the DR instance. It took around 10 to 15 days just to fix that.

It's very difficult to install. No newbie could install SOAR on his own. He will require support. Here, I'm specifically talking about the later versions, not Phantom, rather once it became Splunk SOAR v5.3.5.

We had three people involved.

There is some maintenance. For example, it was using Python 2.7 and then there was the decommissioning of that version and the move to Python 3.x. That meant upgrading all the playbooks.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's very overpriced because it is based on the number of users. There is no bulk licensing.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be to negotiate the cost. And if your organization is on the smaller side, with between 200 to 500 employees, you should not purchase it because it will blow up your finances. A bigger environment, with 2,000-plus employees, can go with the Splunk SOAR solution.

And if you are going with this solution, you should confirm what support they are going to provide, such as whether they are going to provide training credits or not. Sometimes they don't provide Splunk credits for training. Any newbie who is going to work on this will find it terrible to work in this environment. He will not be able to work without guidance. Other SOAR solutions, like Demisto (Cortex SOAR) are very user-friendly.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2508657 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Easy to create playbooks and has saved alert triage time
Pros and Cons
  • "Its ability to integrate with other systems and applications in our environment is pretty easy. Sometimes if we see any complexity we try to involve a consultant to help us. Everything is through the built-in app. Splunk can connect to any assets through the built-in app. It could be in a platform, firewalls, or endpoints. It's easy if it's an app integration."
  • "The font used in the interface could be changed and made easier to read."

What is our primary use case?

We were using Splunk primarily to ingest data from different sources and do an analysis based on its information. We use Splunk SOAR now because we had some incidents where end users were trying to send a bulk of emails from their office email address to their personal email address. SOAR will help us based on the configuration we do. 

When you use your company email address to send emails to your personal email address or elsewhere, you're trying to link the complete confidential data. It's a risk. SOAR is the first step for DLP. We can have alerts set up where we can see if somebody's trying to send more than a fixed number of emails. The next steps happen in terms of implementing DLP.

What is most valuable?

I'm the director. I have a technical team who works on it. I give instructions on how to implement it. We are in the beginning stages.

I like the interface. 

From what I heard from the team, it's pretty easy to create playbooks. With the app, you can easily view an app code. You can look at the log results and troubleshoot. The app can be enabled to suit your needs. As our SOC evolves, we can make changes or customize it according to our needs in SOAR.

SOAR offers end-to-end visibility across our full environment. It really depends on what sources we are ingesting. If you don't have data sources, ingesting into Splunk, which does not cover end-to-end, then, obviously, SOAR will not give you what you're looking for. SOAR will help the best depending on what you ingest into Splunk.

The ability to troubleshoot with SOAR is excellent. 

Its ability to integrate with other systems and applications in our environment is pretty easy. Sometimes if we see any complexity we try to involve a consultant to help us. Everything is through the built-in app. Splunk can connect to any assets through the built-in app. It could be in a platform, firewalls, or endpoints. It's easy if it's an app integration.

We will slowly see improvements in our business resilience once we have everything configured fully.

SOAR saved time in alert triage by around 30%.

SOAR is easy to use in an investigation. It also helped to reduce our security event volume by 50%.

It reduced our mean time to detect by 60-70%.

We have seen time to value. It's a work in progress.

We can set up alerts and get emails, so we can immediately respond to whatever data source or issue is causing it.

What needs improvement?

I would like to have a better user guide to explain how to use it. 

The font used in the interface could be changed and made easier to read. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using SOAR for a few months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would give stability and scalability a nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

We have not used support for SOAR yet. 

How was the initial setup?

The deployment is easy. It took a few hours to get up and running. Two people were involved in the deployment. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's expensive. The price is high but the product is good. 

What other advice do I have?

It's on the cloud so it doesn't require maintenance. 

I would recommend Splunk SOAR. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

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.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2499669 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Defense Center Capability Lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Helps analysts with investigations by automating repetitive tasks and presenting them with scripts that include user lookups, and other information
Pros and Cons
  • "We are not a 24/7 SOC, so the most valuable feature of Splunk SOAR is the auto-response to threats when we are not in the office and the notifications that it sends to the on-call engineer."
  • "It would be ideal for us if Splunk SOAR could integrate with Teams."

What is our primary use case?

We use Splunk SOAR to automate response for ransomware attacks.

How has it helped my organization?

We are triaging with SOAR. It helps the analysts with investigations by automating repetitive tasks and presenting them with scripts that include user lookups, and other information. It also includes widgets for notes.

Splunk SOAR has helped us save on repetitive tasks. Before we had SOAR, we used to triage in Splunk Enterprise using our app but we have migrated most of the searches into SOAR. Now with SOAR, we can get it to close the alerts we know about automatically. It is much faster so the analyst doesn't have many alerts to deal with. Now that we have migrated, we are moving more towards automation and using SOAR to work more for us. Splunk SOAR has freed up the time of three full-time analysts to focus on other tasks.

We only use Splunk SOAR on-premises, but end-to-end visibility is key to having a fast response to ransomware attacks even when we are not in the office.

Splunk has saved us time in threat response.  

What is most valuable?

We are not a 24/7 SOC, so the most valuable feature of Splunk SOAR is the auto-response to threats when we are not in the office and the notifications that it sends to the on-call engineer.

What needs improvement?

The banks have recently bought Splunk Enterprise Security. We haven't implemented it yet. It is being built. The new version coming out is going to incorporate Mission Control and SOAR. It looks like we will need to move Splunk again and do our triage in Enterprise Security. The reason we took the step to SOAR was for the functionality available for the triage which is now being incorporated into Mission Control. We can easily migrate the data over to Mission Control. For us, the next steps will be to use it as a backend server where we can run playbooks and triage in there.

It would be ideal for us if Splunk SOAR could integrate with Teams. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Splunk SOAR for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The version of Splunk SOAR we are on now is stable. We did have issues with the failover in the early days but now with how we have it configured there is hardly any downtime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We use about one point six terabytes of data per day with Splunk with about 6,000 users. We don't need it to scale at the moment.

How are customer service and support?

We use Splunk technical support a lot. They are good and we have a good relationship with our Account Manager who helps us with the tickets and provides us with articles.

Splunk technical support wasn't always readily available, and in one instance, a support representative didn't have the expertise to resolve our specific problem.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Splunk we had our analyst log in manually to Carbon Black. No tool automated the tasks until we switched to Splunk.

How was the initial setup?

We had to get a small engineering team of about three people to be dedicated to Splunk SOAR so we could have Splunk professional service come in and give us a startup. That worked well. They passed their knowledge to our engineering team and we maintain it in-house now.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed with the help of the Splunk professional services team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I found the price of Splunk SOAR to be good.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Splunk SOAR nine out of ten.

Our initial Splunk installation was a successful proof of concept but needed to be made more reliable. Splunk professional services offered assistance, but due to limitations in finding a suitable SOAR solution, we opted for a cold standby implementation. This allows us to switch to the standby instance if the primary SOAR becomes unavailable.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Splunk SOAR Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: July 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Splunk SOAR Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.