ReliaQuest GreyMatter vs. Splunk Enterprise

Our company generates more than a terrabyte of log a day and it can easily go above 2 TB a day. We were using out of the box SOC Solution from splunk to manage our SOC. We lacked the know how of using splunk and also lacked the staff to keep the product up to date to help us tackle the latest threats. We outsourced our SIEM/SOAR service to RQ and they helped us with creating new use cases which addressed the latest threat to our organization. RQ has people who research the latest threats and helps us keep up to date on the day-to-day security operations. RQ also helps with data onboarding if required. So we would recommend RQ to customers who are short-staffed and who lack personnel who could research security threats to keep your organization safe from threat actors.

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

• SOC service.
• Managed services.
• Correlation searches.

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

• Some Analysts are relatively fresh to SOC. They sometimes get put into supporting large infrastructures.
• RQ has a ton of correlation searches that they use to provide end-to-end visibility. Most of them can be restructured to get the same results and this can reduce the number of correlation searches.

Incentivized

• At times some queries can run slowly if indices are not on a portion of the query you use.
• Setup time initially can be difficult if your logs aren't stored in common locations or in a common way to write the log.
• Ability to ingest logs from different locations without having to change code to put logs in a certain place (pro and con).
• Searches can be a bit more difficult to look through if your log isn't pulled in a manner that is easy to read through splunk.

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.

You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.

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

Reliaquest is vendor agnostic. They have a lot of correlation searches that they use to provide security for your organizations. Compared to other products we have tried we felt that they are the only company that is doing proper market research on the latest and greatest threat to our vertical and coming out with the latest methods to keep up to date. RQ also has a good leadership structure that we could rely on if we run into any escalations. Compared to other products that we tried they try to work with you holding hands trying to resolve your problems.

Incentivized

I wanted to learn a new language that I can quickly master and implement. Splunk is easy, fun to use and best of all, it can be developed in hours not days or weeks. Splunk is fundamentally a programming language that is minimal but yet powerful enough to collect, analyze and visualize data.

Incentivized

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

• RQ's Greymatter content has enriched our SOC experience because we always felt Splunk's out-of-the-box use cases were not sufficient enough to provide end-to-end coverage.
• RQ specializes in a lot of big data solutions so that we can rely on them to help us troubleshoot tasks and also make sure our security solutions are working accurately.

Incentivized

• Overall very positive. It has provided visibility to what is going on within our network.
• One drawback is the time it takes to get up to speed with the application, but this is up to the user, and Splunk education is excellent.
• In my field, IT Security, there are few other friends to have in your back pocket better than Splunk. They are just that good.

Incentivized