We compared Splunk Enterprise Security and USM Anywhere based on our users' reviews across several parameters. After reading all of 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. USM Anywhere is highly regarded for its extensive reporting capabilities, thorough vulnerability assessment, seamless file integration, and user-friendly management features. Users say Splunk is a highly scalable and customizable solution.
Room for Improvement: Splunk users recommended improvements in AI capabilities, user-friendliness, and analytics. USM Anywhere users have suggested improvements in self-service plugin management, database optimization, and third-party threat intelligence integration.
Service and Support: While some users found Splunk support to be responsive and helpful, others reported slow response times and a lack of expertise. Reviews of USM Anywhere's support were likewise mixed. Some users say that USM Anywhere's customer service is knowledgeable and responsive, while others have faced delays and incomplete answers.
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. The initial setup for USM Anywhere is generally considered to be straightforward if the user has technical knowledge. Vendor assistance is also available during the deployment phase.
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. USM Anywhere is seen as more cost-effective than premium solutions like IBM QRadar and Splunk, with pricing considered reasonable and relatively low.
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. USM Anywhere has garnered favorable feedback regarding its ROI.
Comparison Results: Splunk is highly regarded for its efficient data processing and powerful search capabilities. Users like Splunk's customization options and ability to quickly process data from multiple sources. However, reviews noted that Splunk could be more user-friendly and improve its analytics. USM Anywhere earned praise for its intuitive management interface and vulnerability assessment features, but users say the solution could integrate third-party threat intelligence better.
"You can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today... but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer."
"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."
"The pricing of the product is excellent."
"Having your logs put all in one place with machine learning working on those logs is a good feature. I don't need to start thinking, "Where are my logs?" My logs are in a centralized repository, like Log Analytics, which is why you can't use Sentinel without Log Analytics. Having all those logs in one place is an advantage."
"Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."
"It is easy to implement (turn on) - does need a skilled analyst to develop queries and playbooks."
"The in-built SOAR of Sentinel is valuable. Kusto Query Language is also valuable for the ease of writing queries and ease of getting insights from the logs. Schedule-based queries within Sentinel are also valuable. I found these three features most useful for my projects."
"The standout feature of Sentinel is that, because it's cloud-based and because it's from Microsoft, it integrates really well with all the other Microsoft products. It's really simple to set up and get going."
"Splunk has facilitated the correlation of information security logs to look for incidents which could cause damage to the company's infrastructure, as well as financial losses from leaks."
"The most valuable feature of Splunk Enterprise Security is website activity monitoring."
"Splunk's visualizations make it easy for users to understand the data."
"Splunk can extract all kinds of data. There's no limitation on what kind of structured and unstructured data one needs to extract — it can access any kind of data, including machine-generated data."
"We can present to our management in real time the security of the batch management for the PCs, security regarding the network equipment. We're currently working in the Azure Cloud project, so we can send any logs from the cloud to Splunk. We can monitor them and we can present to the managers and customers. It's a very good solution for reporting. We use Splunk for reporting and monitoring of any solution in the company."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The correlation searches (properly configured) populate the Incident Management dashboard and provide me a quick birds-eye view of my most important concerns."
"From my experience, the visual aid that it provides is most valuable. There are charts and other means to provide information."
"Our main focus was intrusion detection, alerts, and correlation. It's easy to use AlienVault and integrate it with other alert tools because it includes lots of connectors. Either the tool is already there, or AlienVault will write an API for us if they don't have a connector for the solution that is providing the logs."
"The most valuable features of AT&T AlienVault USM are the ease of management and knowledge of what is on the network of my customers. It's easy to understand the problems, and management our alarms and events."
"What I find the most valuable about USM Anywhere is its compliance. It shows a list of all the administrators logged on and does it quite well. There are no whistles and bells, it's reliable and simple to use."
"It provides a single pane of glass view, coupled with a whole security ecosystem. The ability to manage everything from a central point, including vulnerability assessments, asset management - including the services provided by the various hosts, NIDS, HIDS, etc. - provides a very efficient way of dealing with things."
"Any unusual behaviour, we can monitor. We have alerts set up to be sent when we receive signs of any unusual behaviour."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of deployment that it provides to users. The integrations that the product has with third-party applications are useful."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence."
"AlienVault has an advanced component within one package. With this, we can cover more area with one solution."
"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 should just add more and more out-of-the-box connectors. It is quite a new product, and it has a lot of connectors, and even more would be good."
"The performance could be improved. If I create 15 to 20 lines for a single-use case in KQL, sometimes it takes more time to execute. If I create use cases within a certain timeline, the result will show in .01 seconds. A complex query takes more time to get results."
"The KQL query does not function effectively with Windows 11 machines, and in the majority of machine-based investigations, KQL queries are essential for organizing the data during investigations."
"They should integrate it with many other software-as-a-service providers and make connectors available so that you don't have to do any sort of log normalization."
"The built-in SOAR is not really good out-of-the-box. The SOAR relies on logic apps and you almost need to have some kind of developer background to be able to make these logic apps. Most security people cannot develop anything..."
"For certain vendors, some of the data that Microsoft Sentinel captures is redacted due to privacy reasons."
"One key area that can be improved is by building a strong integration with our XDR platform."
"Technical support needs to be more responsive."
"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."
"I would like to get visibility into the data pipelines on heavy forwarders and indexers to see exactly their source and the cause of saturation when it occurs. This would help us learn even more about our high use applications."
"An area of improvement would be the licensing of the solution. They need a free license, which would allow faster lead times."
"Splunk can improve regex/asset analysis as we do not want to crawl until it is done."
"Splunk is more expensive than other solutions."
"We were inundated with the amount of alerts and alarms that we could get out of it. It is also a resource hog and we didn't have the resources to support it on-prem so we're taking it offline now."
"Configuring a few apps is complex, not straightforward."
"There could be some type of integration with our existing portal. We have our own customer portals, and it would be good if there was an integration so that our portal can provide reports. There could be some type of API into the AlienVault system with the USM system so that it is easy to show the customers high-level reports of the system through our portal."
"We would like more plugins. This being the main point of improvement which would benefit the users."
"The reporting and dashboards have room for improvement."
"AlienVault must improve their correlation feature. Some of the events do not match with the correlation rules and some of the correlation events are false-positive."
"The lack of mature functionality and expertise in any of those areas is a strong negative."
"It would be hard for any legitimate MSSP to use it."
"I've been told that AlienVault doesn't have a full version of NES running in there, but I'm not sure if that's accurate or if my engineer made it that way. I'm not sure he was completely honest either because we had NES in the environment before. Those tools could be improved because AlienVault is a SIEM, and it added all these other features."
"The dashboard could be improved as well as the level of customization."
Splunk Enterprise Security is ranked 1st in Log Management with 228 reviews while USM Anywhere is ranked 15th in Log Management with 113 reviews. Splunk Enterprise Security is rated 8.4, while USM Anywhere is rated 8.4. 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 ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of USM Anywhere writes "Easy to use and affordable". Splunk Enterprise Security is most compared with Wazuh, Dynatrace, IBM Security QRadar, Elastic Security and Azure Monitor, whereas USM Anywhere is most compared with Wazuh, AlienVault OSSIM, IBM Security QRadar, Rapid7 InsightIDR and LogRhythm SIEM. See our Splunk Enterprise Security vs. USM Anywhere report.
See our list of best Log Management vendors and best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors.
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