Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs Splunk SOAR comparison

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Microsoft Logo
17,715 views|9,994 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
Palo Alto Networks Logo
11,001 views|6,061 comparisons
91% willing to recommend
Splunk Logo
6,537 views|3,915 comparisons
86% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Oct 11, 2022

We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks Cortez XSOAR and Splunk Phantom based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Most users of both products report their initial deployment to be straightforward.

  • Features: Users of both solutions are happy with their scalability and stability.

    Cortex users say it has good automation and is user friendly and robust. Some users mention that they would like an on-premises version in addition to the cloud option.

    Splunk reviewers like its security automation platform feature and say it performs well and has excellent customization options but needs to improve its case management.

  • Pricing: Cortex receives mixed reviews in the pricing category. Splunk Phantom users say it is an expensive product.

  • ROI: Reviewers of both products report seeing an ROI.

  • Service and Support: Most users of both solutions report being satisfied with the level of support they receive.

Comparison Results: Both solutions come across as reliable and powerful products. Cortex does slightly better in the Pricing category, however.

To learn more, read our detailed Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs. Splunk SOAR Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Which Do You Recommend, Phantom or Demisto?
Answer: I would not recommend Phantom or Demisto, but rather JASK! JASK is modernizing security operations to reduce organizational risk and improve human efficiency through technology consolidation, enhanced AI and machine learning. We are empowering the SOC analyst to focus on investigative and response work, rather than the onerous data ingestion, normalization, parsing, and alert discrimination that is required to simply determine what is important. Purpose-built by the JASK team, proven in solving real-world SOC issues, the JASK Autonomous Security Operations Center (ASOC) Platform enhances threat detection and orchestration to improve contextual visibility, expose blind spots and initiate faster response times with advanced insights.
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 dashboard that allows me to view all the incidents is the most valuable feature.""The automation rules and playbooks are the most useful that I've seen. A number of other places segregate the automation and playbook as separate tools, whereas Microsoft is a SIEM and SOAR tool in one.""In Azure Sentinel, we have found, they do have a store in their capability. AI and intelligence features. We found that to be very helpful for us because some other things we do need to integrate again or find another vendor for the store""Sentinel improved how we investigate incidents. We can create watchlists and update them to align with the latest threat intelligence. The information Microsoft provides enables us to understand thoroughly and improve as we go along. It allows us to provide monthly reports to our clients on their security posture.""The features that stand out are the detection engine and its integration with multiple data sources.""The automation feature is valuable.""The data connectors that Microsoft Sentinel provides are easy to integrate when we work with a Microsoft agent.""The Identity Behavior tab furnishes us with the entire history linked to each IP or domain that has either accessed or attempted to access our system."

More Microsoft Sentinel Pros →

"The most valuable features are simplicity and ease of integration.""It is quite scalable. I would rate it a ten out of ten.""The most valuable feature is automation.""Cortex XSOAR's most valuable features are the playbooks, custom integration, the machine-learning model, and the layout, classifier, and mapper.""Many different playbooks are available and can be customized.""The solution provides threat intelligence with EDR.""I have no complaints about Cortex's stability.""The pricing is very good."

More Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR Pros →

"The customizable playbook is the most valuable aspect of the solution.""My understanding is the initial setup isn't too hard.""The playbooks are valuable. They are the core component. Being able to implement and build a code process to work through and scale out what we want to do is valuable.""It's pretty easy when it comes to setting up assets. If you want to fetch emails or call a REST API, you can set up an asset and grab that information.""Before its use, analyzing each email would take at least 15 to 20 minutes, with some complex cases taking up to 30 minutes...With the automation provided by Splunk Phantom, we could significantly reduce the amount of time and human effort required to complete this task.""So far, the interface is very easy to use.""I like the way Splunk interacts with various systems via the API. The ability to integrate Splunk with our ticketing system has been an immense help because we can maintain our workflow while blending Splunk with our support desk and other ways that we track work.""The ability to automate Splunk SOAR and customize the playbook use cases is the most valuable feature and is very exciting for me."

More Splunk SOAR Pros →

Cons
"Add more out-of-the-box connectors with other SaaS platforms/applications.""We'd like also a better ticketing system, which is older.""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.""Its implementation could be simpler. It is not really simple or straightforward. It is in the middle. Sometimes, connectors are a little bit complex.""Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way... Also, the fields or columns could be improved. Sometimes, it is not giving the desired results and there is a blank field.""The solution should allow for a streamlined CI/CD procedure.""We're satisfied with the comprehensiveness of the security protection. That said, we do have issues sometimes where there have been global outages and we need to raise a ticket with Microsoft.""They're giving us the queries so we can plug them right into Sentinel. They need to have a streamlined process for updating them in the tool and knowing when things are updated and knowing when there are new detections available from Microsoft."

More Microsoft Sentinel Cons →

"The formats are not compatible, are readily not available, and are not readable.""Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR lacks to offer SIEM functionalities currently.""It is not a very scalable solution.""The solution requires DV but does not support open-source DV elastic searches.""Implementing this solution requires a lot of involvement from the vendor and it should be made easier for the partners.""I would like to see Cortex become less dependent on Active Directory and group policies to manage the deployment. Maybe I need to update my understanding of how to deploy it, but that's the way I know how to use it.""They should provide integration with machine learning platforms.""The user interface could be a bit better."

More Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR Cons →

"We have playbooks written to extract these events and put them into the workflow since it wasn't structured as expected. It was a miss for us. We couldn't figure out why it broke or what actually happened there. It was something in this feed with legitimate and security events, so we tried to understand the names and what we would call them.""There is a lot of room for improvement with the UI.""The UI can be more customizable for the clients.""And most of the challenges that I have faced with the solution can be found in the documentation itself.""Splunk SOAR has room to improve its offering for small-sized customers. The price is not fair for smaller-sized customers.""have put a number of ideas on the ideas.splunk.com site for feature requests for the Splunk SOAR product. I posted one of them about three years ago, which finally got implemented in the latest release that just got announced, so the time to implement new features and things like that is a little bit concerning.""The algorithm and machine learning have room for improvement and can be more user-friendly.""Creating playbooks using the solution’s playbook editor, for me, is very cumbersome. There have been instances where I have said to myself that I just don't want to use this editor. I might just use a code block and write my own code within it... The functionality in the playbook editor is 80 percent there, but that 20 percent is still lacking. They could make it more efficient."

More Splunk SOAR 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 →

  • "There is a perception that it is priced very high compared to other solutions."
  • "From the cost perspective, I have heard that its price is a bit high as compared to other similar products."
  • "There is a yearly license required for this solution and it is expensive."
  • "It is approx $10,000 or $20,000 per year for two user licenses."
  • "When I first looked at Demisto, it had a price tag of $250,000 but when we finally purchased it, it was $345,000."
  • "The price of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is expensive."
  • "The price of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is comparable to other solutions in the market."
  • "The solution is based on an annual licensing model that is expensive."
  • More Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I don't know the exact price, but for my region, it is very expensive."
  • "In my opinion, the price is high, but if you want good products, you have to be willing to pay for them."
  • "It's very overpriced because it is based on the number of users. There is no bulk licensing."
  • "Splunk SOAR is more expensive compared to other options for SOAR."
  • "The licensing cost is reasonable."
  • "When we first purchased our Splunk SOAR license, it was based on an event-count model. It was based on the number of events. I had strong opinions at the time that automation should not be stifled by the amount of automation you can accomplish, so the previous structure was not as beneficial for us. Later that year, we got told or saw at a conference that they announced user-based pricing. We are now in a renewal period, so we migrated to a user-based license model, which is more appropriate for us so that we no longer have to worry about stifling our automation based on the quantity."
  • "Splunk SOAR is an expensive solution for an organization of our size."
  • "The cost is high and the licensing is on an annual basis."
  • More Splunk SOAR Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solutions are best for your needs.
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    Answers from the Community
    Anonymous User
    it_user889167 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user889167 (Director Of Business Development at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees)
    Real User

    I would recommend CyberSponse. There is a reason why CyberSponse have been awarded Government and Military contracts over all the competition! Commerical customers need the same power and capability, why settle for anything less!

    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:Whether the product is cheap or expensive depends on the company and how much they are willing to spend on security… more »
    Top Answer:The solution is complicated to learn. Customers find it difficult to learn how the solution works. We need professionals… more »
    Top Answer:Splunk SOAR's quick response to incidents is the most valuable part.
    Top Answer:The cost is high and the licensing is on an annual basis.
    Top Answer:The cost of Splunk SOAR has room for improvement.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Azure Sentinel
    Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
    Phantom
    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.

    Palo Alto Networks delivers a complete solution that helps Tier-1 through Tier-3 analysts and SOC managers to optimize the entire incident life cycle while auto documenting and journaling all the evidence. More than 100+ integrations enable security orchestration workflows for incident management and other critical security operation tasks.

    Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is a piece of Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response software that redefines what it means for a program to orchestrate security in an automated manner. It is a next-generation solution that offers all of the features of dozens of siloed security operations center tools in one place. Cortex XSOAR combines case management, automation, real-time collaboration, and threat intelligence management to create a platform that can handle all aspects of system security. Teams that make use of Cortex XSOAR can expect to cut the number of issues that they will have to deal with by 75%. At the same time, the speed at which they resolve those issues that slip through will rise by 90%.

    Cortex XSOAR ensures that all of the IT and security tools that you employ function as a unified system. It does this by employing hundreds of integrations that allow you to run a wide variety of programs at once without ever worrying about them interfering with each other. These integrations are limited only by your imagination. They can be used immediately as they are, if that is what you need. However, they can also be customized according to the requirements of your system. This approach provides you with the maximum levels of both flexibility and utility.

    The model that this platform uses is based on a machine learning algorithm. The level of automation allows you to provide more than an unchanging and inflexible blanket of coverage. Cortex XSOAR takes all of the data that it gathers and uses it to expand its protective capabilities. This creates recommendations that you can use to create a threat playbook that can be deployed uniformly throughout your organization.


    Benefits of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR

    Some of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR’s benefits include:

    • The ability to have all of your data collected in a single location. Valuable time can be saved now that everything that security analysts need to know in order to diagnose and react to threats has been centralized.
    • Security operations center tasks can be automated. This allows you to assign management and analyst staff to the most essential tasks. The effectiveness of your organization will be increased, which will result in a rise in your company’s overall security and productivity.
    • Many kinds of data can be stitched together by this platform. Network, endpoint, cloud, and identity data can be combined to offer a more complete picture of the threats that are discovered.
    • Integrated threat intelligence management can notify you about threats in real time. Now you can diagnose and address issues as they arise. You can also assign values to the threats so that your resources are being used in the most effective manner possible.


    Reviews from Real Users

    Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR’s centralized monitoring interface and automation are two features that help it stand out. This might help explain why one quarter of the Fortune 500 companies choose Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR over the competition.

    Peerspot users note the effectiveness of these features. One user wrote, “We were looking for a single pane of glass type of solution that would allow us to physically be in one appliance - be able to work in concert with other servers that we have within our environment. We wanted orchestration and automation. The single pane of glass was the most important part.” Another noted, "The automation part and the playbook creation part are awesome. The way it is responding to the customers and incidents is also very good. In the SOC environment, I guess it will carry out around 50% of the work."

    Splunk SOAR offers features like automation and orchestration of manual tasks, speeding up work, detection and response to advanced and emerging threats. 

    Go from overwhelmed to in-control

    Automate manual tasks. Address every alert, every day. Establish repeatable procedures that allow security analysts to stop being reactive and focus on mission-critical objectives to protect your business.

    Force multiply your team

    Orchestrate and automate repetitive tasks, investigation and response to increase efficiency and productivity, and do more with the people you already have. Make a team of three feel like a team of 10.

    From 30 minutes to 30 seconds

    Work faster with Splunk SOAR. Respond to threats in seconds. Lower your mean time to respond (MTTR) by automating security tasks and workflows across all of your security tools.

    End-to-end security operations made easy

    Take advantage of Splunk Enterprise Security and Splunk SOAR joining forces to provide a seamless and intuitive SecOps platform to prevent, detect and respond to advanced and emerging threats.

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
    Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
    Recorded Future, Blackstone
    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 Firm20%
    Educational Organization15%
    Government10%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm35%
    Computer Software Company18%
    University12%
    Energy/Utilities Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government10%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise65%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise53%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise69%
    Buyer's Guide
    Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs. Splunk SOAR
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs. Splunk SOAR and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is ranked 2nd in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) with 42 reviews while Splunk SOAR is ranked 3rd in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) with 32 reviews. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is rated 8.4, while Splunk SOAR is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR writes "Enables the investigators to go through the review process a lot quicker". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Splunk SOAR writes "Takes most of the work away, but the time they take to implement new features is a little bit of concern". Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is most compared with Cortex XSIAM, Fortinet FortiSOAR, Swimlane, ServiceNow Security Operations and IBM Resilient, whereas Splunk SOAR is most compared with Cortex XSIAM, ServiceNow Security Operations, Torq, Tines and Cisco SecureX. See our Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs. Splunk SOAR report.

    See our list of best Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) vendors.

    We monitor all Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) 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.