Cisco SecureX vs. Splunk Enterprise

It's well suited with any security operation center. So if someone is doing anything with security, whether it be firewalling, endpoint security whether it be email security, it's certainly suited to any type of security that can roll up security events. So this is a single pane of glass where you can view all your security events. So what it's doing is it's taking all your security silos that have historically been very difficult to manage and it's rolling everything up into one dashboard, so it makes it much easier to manage.

Incentivized

Pros: Splunk is very well suited if you have multiple log sources of related data. All of them can be correlated and tasks can be automated based on the requirement. Other than alerts, Splunk can also run a specific script of your choice, based on some defined conditions. Cons: If you have a few logs but a large number of log sources, Splunk can be very expensive.

Incentivized

• So the product enables end users to get visibility into their security environment, not only across the Cisco products but across the third-party products as well. The product also automates detection and response. So the product really offers end-user efficiency in the security operations center.

Incentivized

• Real-time + Scheduled alerts - i-e you can set up alerts which are actively monitoring your logs
• Pretty good response time for search results. With our key/value logging, Splunk makes it blazing fast to query the data.
• Dashboards provide insights into historical data
• Love how Splunk indexes all of the data and provides keys to search on

Incentivized

• Of course, many companies prefer to obtain security from the cloud; however, not all of them prefer it, which is why having a local implementation would allow these companies to also use said software as their ally for their security.
• Working with this software can be simple, that is, any threat can be visualized with greater precision, but when it comes to managing its orchestration, it is a bit complex.
• Its integration with other software can be simple but with others it is not, that is why it would be ideal if all of them could be carried out in the same way.
• Integrating with a larger number of third party software would be of great help, to further enhance the analysis and detection of threats.

Incentivized

• Even though there is a search tool as a help function, you still have to read through many documentation to find the answers you're looking for and sometimes you don't find it. The help function in Splunk could be improved to be more intuitive or have a built-in help per report, panel or dashboard.
• Creating a Splunk dashboard is rather straightforward however, customization is not. Splunk could be improved to provide more tools or features for customization such as adding colors and font options for text and graphs or graphics.
• My dashboard has a lot of useful information and I want the important panels and reports at the top but there is no easy way to do this. Perhaps Splunk could be improved to allow features such as adding URL links to other dashboards or some other clever way to emphasize the important data in my dashboard without compromising space.

Incentivized

We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.

Splunk Enterprise has plenty of storage space for security logs and can search and correlate suspicious activities up to 30+ days back. Splunk Enterprise can integrate with a ticketing system to track threats and correlate with IoC between security events. Splunk Enterprise can provide reports of account lockouts. Splunk Enterprise can consolidate multiple security alerts into one entry with a number showing how many events occurred.

Incentivized

When properly setup and configured, Splunk is extremely reliable.

Incentivized

Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.

Incentivized

The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.

Smooth without too many major issues.

Incentivized

A lot of the look and feel of both products is quite similar. There's several best practices on visualization that are followed in both and integration of common telemetry is comfortable and quick. But while Microsoft ATP offers deep insights into mostly the Microsoft environment and a limited view into other common sources, SecureX shines in all the non-client areas Microsoft's product seems lackluster in.

Incentivized

A lot of products have natively inside their own dashboards and or their own logging repositories. And each one is difficult to learn or they're too complex or they're not verbose in the sense that they're not easy to mine the data that you're looking for. So that could be anything from the native logging that you find in other Cisco products. It's easier to use Splunk to draw the data that you're looking for as opposed to going to the individual's products themselves to get the logs that you're looking for.

Incentivized

Splunk can scale in to the petabyte per day range which of course is awesome

• It is a solution that is of great help to reduce threats and their powerful damage, thanks to its high threat identification.
• Its workflow automation saves time and money, that is, it makes possible a better performance in the team that handles corporate security because it helps them with the tasks.
• By unifying security solutions, it gives the advantage of reducing operating costs and greatly improving responses to threats.
• Their analyzes are vital to carry out a quick remediation and thus reduce the time in which the company is under threat.

Incentivized

• Splunk has allowed developers to diagnose production issues when access of control was taken away from them to be allowed to view items in production environments and I believe that is invaluable.
• At times some developers weren't super happy about using it, but it was more of the fact that they were used to having production access and not creating their splunk queries to get information.
• Going one place to view logs was very beneficial to have.

Incentivized