We compared Splunk Enterprise Security and Microsoft Sentinel based on our users' reviews using several parameters.
Splunk Enterprise Security is praised for its threat intelligence, analytics, and user-friendly interface. Users mention improvements needed in user-friendliness, search query language, and performance. Pricing is considered high but justified by the value. Microsoft Sentinel is affordable and has a simpler setup process. Users appreciate the advanced threat visibility, integration with other Microsoft products, and machine learning capabilities. Improvement suggestions include a more intuitive interface, better customization options, and enhanced integration with third-party tools. Users find both products valuable with positive impacts on their organization.
Features: Splunk Enterprise Security stands out for its customizable analytics and real-time monitoring, while Microsoft Sentinel excels in advanced threat visibility and machine learning integration. Splunk focuses on scalability and customization, whereas Sentinel emphasizes centralizing alerts and actionable insights.
Pricing and ROI: Splunk Enterprise Security tends to have higher pricing and high setup costs initially, but users find the value and benefits worth the investment. Microsoft Sentinel is noted for its reasonable pricing, minimal setup costs, and flexible licensing options. Splunk Enterprise Security offers improved operational efficiency, threat detection, and incident response, while Microsoft Sentinel provides enhanced security, reduced incident response time, and seamless integration.
Room for Improvement: Splunk Enterprise Security users seek a more user-friendly interface and simplified search query language. They desire enhanced alerting and reporting features to improve performance. Microsoft Sentinel users want a more intuitive platform, better customization options, enhanced integration capabilities, and improved reporting and documentation.
Deployment and customer support: While Splunk Enterprise Security had varying implementation durations, users found Microsoft Sentinel quicker to deploy. However, some noted that Sentinel's setup was more complex compared to Splunk's faster implementation and simpler setup process. Splunk Enterprise Security stands out for its prompt response times and knowledgeable staff, enhancing the overall user experience. Microsoft Sentinel impresses with quick issue resolution and effective, helpful support, leading to positive user experiences.
The summary above is based on 201 interviews we conducted recently with Splunk Enterprise Security and Microsoft Sentinel users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"We have no complaints about the features or functionality."
"I like the ability to run custom KQL queries. I don't know if that feature is specific to Sentinel. As far as I know, they are using technology built into Azure's Log Analytics app. Sentinel integrates with that, and we use this functionality heavily."
"The AI and ML of Azure Sentinel are valuable. We can use machine learning models at the tenant level and within Office 365 and Microsoft stack. We don't need to depend upon any other connectors. It automatically provisions the native Microsoft products."
"Sentinel pricing is good"
"The ability of all these solutions to work together natively is essential. We have an Azure subscription, including Log Analytics. This feature automatically acts as one of the security baselines and detects recommendations because it also integrates with Defender. We can pull the sysadmin logs from Azure. It's all seamless and native."
"There are a lot of things you can explore as a user. You can even go and actively hunt for threats. You can go on the offensive rather than on the defensive."
"Sentinel has an intuitive, user-friendly way to visualize the data properly. It gives me a solid overview of all the logs. We get a more detailed view that I can't get from the other SIEM tools. It has some IP and URL-specific allow listing"
"Sentinel also enables you to ingest data from your entire ecosystem and not just from the Microsoft ecosystem. It can receive data from third-party vendors' products such firewalls, network devices, and antivirus solutions. It's not only a Microsoft solution, it's for everything."
"The graph visualization is the most valuable feature."
"The alerts are very effective."
"This solution helps us increase our productivity."
"Exporting is a good feature. It helps me out when I have to do reports. I do a lot of exporting and crunching of the numbers. Dashboards are okay for showing to the leadership, but for doing statistics and updating tickets, the export feature is very beneficial for me."
"The correlation capabilities are the first value that our clients say they like with Splunk."
"It has quite extensive support in terms of integration. If you want to do anything, there are tools for that."
"Great platform with user-friendly interface and GUI."
"The most valuable feature is the DSS, also known as SPL, because it allows users to script advanced queries with limited knowledge."
"We do see continuous improvement all the time, however, I haven't got a specific feature that is lacking or not well designed."
"Sentinel provides decent visibility, but it's sometimes a little cumbersome to get to the information I want because there is so much information. I would also like to see more seamless integration between Sentinel and third-party security products."
"We have been working with multiple customers, and every time we onboard a customer, we are missing an essential feature that surprisingly doesn't exist in Sentinel. We searched the forums and knowledge bases but couldn't find a solution. When you onboard new customers, you need to enable the data connectors. That part is easy, but you must create rules from scratch for every associated connector. You click "next," "next," "next," and it requires five clicks for each analytical rule. Imagine we have a customer with 150 rules."
"I would like Sentinel to have more out-of-the-box analytics rules. There are already more than 400 rules, but they could add more industry-specific ones. For example, you could have sets of out-of-the-box rules for banking, financial sector, insurance, automotive, etc., so it's easier for people to use it out of the box. Structuring the rules according to industry might help us."
"Only one thing is missing: NDR is not available out-of-the-box. The competitive cloud-native SIEM providers have the NDR component. Currently, Sentinel needs NDR to be powered from either Corelight or some other NDR provider."
"In terms of features I would like to see in future releases, I'm interested in a few more use cases around automation. I do believe a lot of automation is available, and more is in progress, but that would be my area of interest."
"Sometimes, we are observing large ingestion delays. We expect logs within 5 minutes, but it takes about 10 to 15 minutes."
"The playbook development environment is not as rich as it should be. There are multiple occasions when we face problems while creating the playbook."
"While there aren't any major areas where the solution has to be improved, there are certain integrations that are still not available. I would specifically like to see legacy applications integrated."
"We'd like Splunk to reduce false positives."
"The product's price may be an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The initial setup is complex, but this is necessary. We needed to take into consideration how to direct log files from thousands of machines to Splunk, and how to ingest those files."
"We find that the maintenance process could be a lot better."
"The product is relatively expensive."
"It would be nice if Splunk reduced the cost of training. Their training sessions are way too costly."
"Custom visualizations are real hard. While the default visualizations are good, creating enhanced visualizations are complex."
Microsoft Sentinel is ranked 2nd in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 85 reviews while Splunk Enterprise Security is ranked 1st in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 240 reviews. Microsoft Sentinel is rated 8.2, while Splunk Enterprise Security is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Sentinel writes "Gives a comprehensive and holistic view of the ecosystem and improves visibility and the ability to respond". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Splunk Enterprise Security writes "It has a drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to know SQL or Java to construct a query ". Microsoft Sentinel is most compared with AWS Security Hub, IBM Security QRadar, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Elastic Security and Wazuh, whereas Splunk Enterprise Security is most compared with Wazuh, Dynatrace, IBM Security QRadar, Elastic Security and Datadog. See our Microsoft Sentinel vs. Splunk Enterprise Security report.
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