ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

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32,763 views|18,195 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
Splunk Logo
25,711 views|20,955 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 21, 2023

We compared Splunk Enterprise Security and ArcSight ESM across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:

  • Features: Splunk Enterprise Security stands out for its efficiency, extensive integration options, and powerful search functionality. Users say Splunk is a highly scalable and customizable solution. ArcSight ESM is praised for its well-designed dashboard, real-time reporting, and threat intelligence capabilities that leverage AI and correlation tools. 

  • Room for Improvement: Splunk users recommended improvements in AI capabilities, user-friendliness, and analytics. ArcSight ESM users have recommended improvements in training, speed, and data administration.

  • Service and Support: While some users found Splunk support to be responsive and helpful, others reported slow response times and a lack of expertise. Some ArcSight ESM users have found the support to be responsive and helpful, while others have faced issues with slow response times and a lack of expertise.

  • Ease of Deployment: Some users thought Splunk Enterprise Security was easy to deploy, while others found it challenging and needed assistance from Splunk engineers or third-party integrators. Some said that ArcSight ESM is straightforward to set up, while others noted that integration with other systems can be challenging and requires specialized knowledge.

  • Pricing: Some users consider Splunk Enterprise Security to be expensive, but others said the price is reasonable. A few users expressed concerns about the cost of scaling up the solution and managing large volumes of data. Users consider the pricing of ArcSight ESM to be reasonable and affordable.

  • ROI: Users said that it’s challenging to calculate an ROI for Splunk Enterprise Security, and the return varies depending on individual circumstances. While some users have observed a substantial ROI, others have not actively explored or been engaged in ROI conversations. Splunk Enterprise Security offers varying ROI outcomes based on different situations, with certain users achieving significant returns. ArcSight ESM delivers an ROI by helping clients achieve compliance objectives and prevent incidents.

Comparison Results: Splunk is highly regarded for its efficient data processing and powerful search features, but users suggested improvements to its AI capabilities and analytics. ArcSight ESM offers robust threat intelligence and real-time reporting but falls short in terms of data administration and speed. 

To learn more, read our detailed ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs. Splunk Enterprise Security Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The UI of Sentinel is very good and easy to use, even for beginners.""The connectivity and analytics are great.""The product can integrate with any device.""The machine learning and artificial intelligence on offer are great.""The data connectors that Microsoft Sentinel provides are easy to integrate when we work with a Microsoft agent.""Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it.""Log aggregation and data connectors are the most valuable features.""Investigations are something really remarkable. We can drill down right to the raw logs by running different queries and getting those on the console itself."

More Microsoft Sentinel Pros →

"The tool sends an automated mail to all the operators, which makes it easy to share the information and reporting.​""ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) works perfectly. It's a stable and scalable product.""The solution has gone beyond signature-based monitoring and analysis and is AI-powered. It is good enough to cover the full range of cybersecurity services.""It gives better overall visibility. Before, we didn't have a unified system for managing security alerts. ArcSight introduced various alerts, giving us a better visibility of potential problems.""The most valuable feature of ArcSight ESM is its ease of use.""ArcSight ESM allows us to find if someone is doing an administrative operation at inappropriate times of day or trying to do something they're not allowed to.""It makes maintenance very easy.""The solution is pretty stable."

More ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) Pros →

"It is quite extensible. It is a platform that we can build our use instead of each case instead of each case being limited or restricted to each capability. This is probably the best feature.""This solution helps us increase our productivity.""It allows us to digest the information, the data, the different data streams, so we can make decisions based upon information that we receive, and it is pretty robust.""The ability to ingest any data and display it in a way that anyone can understand.""The most valuable features for us include its robust log management capabilities, which allow us to efficiently handle and retain logs for extended periods as needed.""It provides logs in one place, so they are easy to find. It collects the logs from multiple places, then you have just one place where you see the whole flow from the front-end to the back-end.""The level of robustness on offer is very good.""It's the completeness of the solution that we like the most."

More Splunk Enterprise Security Pros →

Cons
"There is room for improvement in entity behavior and the integration site.""The solution should allow for a streamlined CI/CD procedure.""They can work on the EDR side of things... Every time we need to onboard these kinds of machines into the EDR, we need to do it with the help of Intune, to sync up the devices, and do the configuration. I'm looking for something on the EDR side that will reduce this kind of work.""The product can be improved by reducing the cost to use AI machine learning.""While I appreciate the UI itself and the vast amount of information available on the platform, I'm finding the overall user experience to be frustrating due to frequent disconnections and the requirement to repeatedly re-authenticate.""Sentinel should be improved with more connectors. At the moment, it only covers a few vendors. If I remember correctly, only 100 products are supported natively in Sentinel, although you can connect them with syslog. But Microsoft should increase the number of native connectors to get logs into Sentinel.""The interface could be more user-friendly. It''s a small improvement that they could make if they wanted to.""At the network level, there is a limitation in integrating some of the switches or routers with Microsoft Sentinel. Currently, SPAN traffic monitoring is not available in Microsoft Sentinel. I have heard that it is available in Defender for Identity, which is a different product. It would be good if LAN traffic monitoring or SPAN traffic monitoring is available in Microsoft Sentinel. It would add a lot of value. It is available in some of the competitor products in the market."

More Microsoft Sentinel Cons →

"The initial setup is very complex. We had to architect a deployment which allowed us to incorporate an ever growing number of customers into our hosted instance of ArcSight.""The correlation engine effectively connects different events, significantly improving our detection reach. However, limitations exist with non-default alerts, where additional costs arise for integration.""The UI interface is somewhat complex and needs to be simplified.""ArcSight is incredibly complex when configuring and deploying, and if your organization doesn't know what they want and what they need, ArcSight will be a challenge for them.""The biggest requirement is that there is no cloud solution for this product yet. They need to create a cloud version. It's the biggest thing they can do to make the solution better.""We would like the ability to easily identify either unused resources or those that are being used sub-optimally.""The onboarding process for this solution could be better. It also needs a better GUI.""I would like to have a feature that gives us an entire report listing what devices are integrated."

More ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) Cons →

"I would like to see ability to master management. In terms of clustering, how it manages clustering needs improvement.""I would like to see future development in terms of ML (Machine Learning).""More training on PetaData using artificial intelligence techniques to identify the events which are not normal and exceptions that would help the organization identify threats and malware on the go with results.""Splunk does not build apps. They only go back and validate the apps that somebody has already built. They should have remote consulting support. They have a wonderful solution. They have 24/7 security. Nobody needs to depend on any third party and will therefore just buy Splunk on the cloud.""Some of the queries are difficult to run and have room for improvement.""The algorithms customization of Splunk could improve. They have limited algorithms for machine learning support. If they can allow the user to add more machine learning algorithms, such as the ability to choose the algorithm that a user might want. Additionally, they should provide the required libraries for those algorithms, and then analyzes the data for use.""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.""It takes time to train people."

More Splunk Enterprise Security Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It comes with a Microsoft subscription which the customer has, so they don't have to invest somewhere else."
  • "It is a consumption-based license model. bands at 100, 200, 400 GB per day etc. Azure Sentinel Pricing | Microsoft Azure"
  • "Good monthly operational cost model for the detection and response outcomes delivered, M365 logs don't count toward the limits which is a good benefit."
  • "I have had mixed feedback. At one point, I heard a client say that it sometimes seems more expensive. Most of the clients are on Office 365 or M365, and they are forced to take Azure SIEM because of the integration."
  • "It is kind of like a sliding scale. There are different tiers of pricing that go from $100 per day up to $3,500 per day. So, it just kind of depends on how much data is being stored. There can be additional costs to the standard license other than the additional data. It just kind of depends on what other services you're spinning up in Azure, or if you're using something like Azure log analytics."
  • "I am just paying for the log space with Azure Sentinel. It costs us about $2,000 a month. Most of the logs are free. We are only paying money for Azure Firewall logs because email logs or Azure AD logs are free to use for us."
  • "Sentinel is a bit expensive. If you can figure a way of configuring it to meet your needs, then you can find a way around the cost."
  • "Azure Sentinel is very costly, or at least it appears to be very costly. The costs vary based on your ingestion and your retention charges."
  • More Microsoft Sentinel Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "HPE ArcSight pricing might be more expensive than other SIEM solutions, but in my opinion it has powerful features and great flexibility in developing complex use cases."
  • "ArcSight is pretty expensive compared with its competitors. I believe that is fine as it provides value."
  • "Aggregation can help a lot in pushing down licensing costs."
  • "​It is best to be an institutional buyer and directly contact the sales team, as they can provide over-the-top discounts for bulk orders.​"
  • "Thanks to Micro Focus's licensing model, as an MSSP, we are able to see a complete return on our investment almost immediately."
  • "Customers without a ton of resources to dedicate to deployment may be better served by a managed ArcSight service."
  • "The pricing is great compared to others."
  • "The cost of the solution is not very high, although hiring a qualified analyst to work with the product is expensive."
  • More ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing and licensing is quite expensive. But for the value the product provides, it seems at par in the market."
  • "Although Splunk is an expensive product, it is designed to be utilized across your organization in order to maximize your ROI and lower your TCO."
  • "It is not cheap."
  • "Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
  • "You will eat up whatever you purchase quickly. The level of insights that Splunk empowers is addictive."
  • "Splunk licensing model might seem expensive but with all the gain in functionalities you will have compared to traditional SIEM solutions I think it’s worth the price."
  • "Pricing is pretty fair."
  • "While licensing can be a concern, there are ways to reduce the licensing costs including filtering some events."
  • More Splunk Enterprise Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Vinod Shankar
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and… more »
    Top Answer:It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for… more »
    Top Answer:We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is… more »
    Top Answer:In my market, a lot of financial companies had or have an ArcSight installation. Just because in former times it was… more »
    Top Answer:We utilize ArcSight ESM for real-time threat detection in our organization. We have custom rules that we've developed on… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing model is expensive compared to open-source alternatives, especially as your needs grow.
    Top Answer:For tools I’d recommend:  -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is… more »
    Top Answer:Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring… more »
    Top Answer:Splunk helps us be more proactive. We can take predictive action to identify and block threats so that nothing harmful… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Azure Sentinel
    Micro Focus ArcSight, HPE ArcSight, ArcSight
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution that lets you see and stop threats before they cause harm. Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance, and elastically scale to meet your security needs—while reducing IT costs. With Microsoft Sentinel, you can:

    - Collect data at cloud scale—across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds

    - Detect previously uncovered threats and minimize false positives using analytics and unparalleled threat intelligence from Microsoft

    - Investigate threats with AI and hunt suspicious activities at scale, tapping into decades of cybersecurity work at Microsoft

    - Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks

    To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

    ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is a powerful SIEM solution for analyzing, collecting, correlating, and reporting on security event information. ArcSight ESM analyzes information from all of your data sources while helping your organization maintain high security. In addition, the solution is very customizable and enables users to create their own company-specific rule sets to automatically trigger instant alerts.

    ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) Features

    • Real-time threat detection
    • Visualization and reporting capabilities
    • Patented log management
    • Personalized dashboards
    • Scalable event monitoring
    • Seamless integration with your existing SOC tools
    • Behavior profiling
    • Data and user monitoring
    • Application monitoring
    • Analytics
    • Deployment/support simplicity

    ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using ESM include:

    • Real-time information: ArcSight ESM can correlate data from any source in real-time to detect incidents before they become a breach.
    • Compliance: Optional compliance packs enable packaged reports for PCI, SOX, and IT Governance.
    • Security analytics: With ArcSight ESM, you can build and maintain a security operation center (SOC) through big data security analytics.
    • Integration: ArcSight ESM allows you to integrate SOC with network operations, service desk, CMDB, business intelligence, Hadoop, email security, application security, threat feeds, and more. 
    • Speed: ArcSight ESM provides excellent speed of event collection with patented log management tools. 
    • Advanced detection: ArcSight ESM can detect unusual or unauthorized activities as they occur, preventing business disruptions. 
    • Decrease threat exposure: By implementing ArcSight ESM, you reduce threat exposure because the solution detects threats in real time.  
    • Operational efficiency: ArcSight ESM makes it possible for you to automate responses with ArcSight’s native SOAR, which saves your organization time, and therefore increases your operational efficiency.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) users.

    A Head of Professional Services at a computer software company says, “The simplicity of the solution is the most valuable aspect of the product. The product is quite mature. It's been around for a long time. The integration is easy for the most part.”

    A Managing partner at a tech services company states that the solution is “Good at consolidating logs, fairly stable, and can scale.” 

    PeerSpot user Abbasi P., Vice President Derivatives Ops IT at a financial services firm, explains, “The user interfaces are quite good and speedy, and I like the consoles too. The typology and the setup are also good.”

    A Chief Technological Officer at a tech services company says, "It is a very useful tool for intelligence building because it has many use cases and many rule sets."

    An Associate Vice President at a consumer goods company comments, “We primarily use the solution for its technology including its independent logs, and those types of things. The solution offers very good monitoring. The product's log management and event management capabilities are excellent. There are a lot of really good analytical components. It helps us focus on analysis.”

    Splunk Enterprise Security is a SIEM, log management, and IT operations analytics tool. The solution provides users with the ability to secure their information and manage their data in the cloud, data centers, or other applications. Splunk Enterprise Security also offers visibility from different areas, levels, and devices, rather than from a single system, thus, providing its users with flexibility. Splunk Enterprise Security can monitor data and analyze, detect, and prevent intrusions. This benefits users as it provides alerts to possible intrusions, helps users to be proactive, and reduces risk factors. 

    Full visibility across your environment

    Break down data silos and gain actionable intelligence by ingesting data from multicloud and on-premises deployments. Get full visibility to quickly detect malicious threats in your environment.

    Fast threat detection

    Defend against threats with advanced security analytics, machine learning and threat intelligence that focus detection and provide high-fidelity alerts to shorten triage times and raise true positive rates.

    Efficient investigations

    Gather all the context you need and initiate flexible investigations with security analytics at your fingertips. The built-in open and extensible data platform boosts productivity and drives down fatigue.

    Open and scalable

    Built on an open and scalable data platform, you can stay agile in the face of evolving threats and business needs. Splunk meets you where you are on your cloud journey, and integrates across your data, tools and content.

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
    Lake Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bank AlJazira, Banca Intesa, and Obrela.
    Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm33%
    Comms Service Provider19%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Insurance Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Government10%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise54%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise63%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is ranked 12th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 93 reviews while Splunk Enterprise Security is ranked 2nd in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 228 reviews. ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is rated 7.8, while Splunk Enterprise Security is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) writes "Allows for monitoring logs according to industry standards within ESM but has a total capacity capped at 12 TB, limiting real-time data retention periods". 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 ". ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is most compared with ArcSight Intelligence, Trellix ESM, IBM Security QRadar, AWS Security Hub and LogRhythm SIEM, whereas Splunk Enterprise Security is most compared with Wazuh, Dynatrace, IBM Security QRadar, Elastic Security and Azure Monitor. See our ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs. Splunk Enterprise Security report.

    See our list of best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors.

    We monitor all Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.