SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.N/A
Splunk Enterprise Security
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Splunk Enterprise Security is an analytics-driven SIEM that helps to combat threats with actionable intelligence and advanced analytics at scale.N/A
Pricing
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Enterprise Security
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Enterprise Security
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Enterprise Security
Considered Both Products
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Chose SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
We found that SolarWinds performed poorly when the Architecture included many large data centers spread across the globe. When evaluating the SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) solution we quickly realized that we needed a distributed architecture with log aggregation to …
Splunk Enterprise Security

No answer on this topic

Features
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Enterprise Security
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Comparison of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
8.9
18 Ratings
13% above category average
Splunk Enterprise Security
8.1
108 Ratings
3% above category average
Centralized event and log data collection9.018 Ratings7.5106 Ratings
Correlation8.015 Ratings8.9105 Ratings
Event and log normalization/management8.018 Ratings8.9106 Ratings
Deployment flexibility10.018 Ratings7.0107 Ratings
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools8.013 Ratings8.0102 Ratings
Custom dashboards and workspaces9.017 Ratings8.9108 Ratings
Host and network-based intrusion detection10.03 Ratings8.0102 Ratings
Data integration/API management00 Ratings7.9103 Ratings
Behavioral analytics and baselining00 Ratings7.4100 Ratings
Rules-based and algorithmic detection thresholds00 Ratings8.5101 Ratings
Response orchestration and automation00 Ratings7.593 Ratings
Reporting and compliance management00 Ratings8.9101 Ratings
Incident indexing/searching00 Ratings8.0107 Ratings
User Ratings
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Enterprise Security
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(46 ratings)
7.0
(109 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(2 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(6 ratings)
7.1
(13 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
7.5
(17 ratings)
7.3
(7 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(98 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Splunk Enterprise Security
Likelihood to Recommend
SolarWinds
Optimal for SolarWinds Security Event Manager needs for smaller companies - it is a very cool product but has some limitations around EPS (which gets chewed up quickly if you're doing it the right way & adding servers/storage/FW & other network devices)... Also pricing model is GREAT (not consumption-based, which is the greatest grift the SIEM industry has created).
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Cisco
Based on my experience, Splunk is a strong git for some environments and a poor match for others. The distinction is primarily based on infrastructure complexity and budget. It's perfect for large enterprises with a mix of on-prem/cloud infrastructure. It's not a perfect match for small teams with restricted resources.
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Pros
SolarWinds
  • It does a great job of notifying us when accounts have been locked out. We can then find out the device on the network where the login attempt occurred.
  • Searching for incidents is now a lot faster with the implementation of the HTML 5 interface.
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Cisco
  • Writes Powerful Queries: The queries that can be written using the Splunk Query Language are very powerful and highly customizable to meet every need. Ex: Writing queries to search the intersection of two different sources like Network and Endpoint Logs.
  • Offers Dashboard Abilities: Helps build complex panels for Dashboards in addition to providing several out-of-the-box panels. Ex: creating panels to calculate the performance of analysts in a given timezone.
  • Helpful Search Aids: It helps to set up complex custom alerts very easily. The interesting fields section is very helpful while threat hunting. Ex: It shows all the users and the frequency of each in a failed login event. The user list on the interesting fields is useful to look for suspicious logins.
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Cons
SolarWinds
  • All SolarWinds product suffer from slow response times in management portals. SolarWinds SEM is no exception. While it is much preferred over a "thick client" there is much room for improvement in speed.
  • If you use the email alert features with SolarWinds make sure to prepare you staff and team for the large amount of emails they could receive. Make sure to reduce the number of alerts so your team does not ignore the alerts.
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Cisco
  • Improved User Interface Customization: While the interface is generally intuitive, providing more options for users to customize their dashboards and views would enhance the overall user experience. Tailoring the interface to specific roles or use cases could be a valuable addition.
  • Simplified Alert Management: Streamlining the process of managing alerts, such as grouping or categorizing them based on severity or type, would make it easier for security teams to prioritize and respond to incidents effectively.
  • Expanded Threat Intelligence Feeds: Increasing the variety and sources of threat intelligence feeds available within ES would provide a broader context for identifying and mitigating emerging threats, ensuring a more comprehensive defense against evolving attack vectors.
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Likelihood to Renew
SolarWinds
It is pretty likely that we will renew SEM when the time comes up. It is easy to use and maintain so there isn't much of a need to replace this product. It is also a pretty fair price for the capabilities provided by the SEM
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Cisco
We are very happy with Splunk and would advise anyone to take a serious look at it. It might look pricey but the rewards Splunk offers seem endless.
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Usability
SolarWinds
If you are familiar with SolarWinds then you can use this product it's as easy as that. If you have never used a SolarWinds product then it will take a minute to get how they do reports and make dashboards but that being said the tool is great and can make things very easy once you get a feel for how it works and get everything setup how you like it.
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Cisco
Maintaining hundreds or even 1000+ SOC use cases is really difficult, considering that the Data sources may not always send the data. A module that detects data freshness issues and detect data format changes would be a great help. the main challenge today using Splunk Enterprise Security is making sure that the detection rules are still working properly given all the changes that occur in data source applications. Also, maintaining the data collects on tens of thousands of servers and more than 100k workstations is a real company IT challenge: the splunkbase forwarder may not support old OS anymore, while these are the most important to monitor. Moving to the Open Telemetry collector has become essential so that only 1 agent is required for both SIEM and application observability.
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Reliability and Availability
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
I don't think I've ever seen Splunk ES go fully offline or have any downtime greater than a few minutes on rare occasions.
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Performance
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
It takes a long time for items to load if you are just generally searching through logs. It is best to use the data models which load faster but can be strange in terms of what is coming from which logs where. Yes, you can look it up, but this also requires familiarity with where things are and how to look them up.
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Support Rating
SolarWinds
The quality of support can vary depending on whom you end up speaking with. I was fortunate enough to work with a support representative who was very familiar with the product. He had even authored some of the support documentation on the website. On the flip side, I had two other experiences where I was simply directed to online training material.
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Cisco
It's good when it's responsive, but I've had times where I had to wait quite a while for a response. But these are typically the exceptions rather than the rule. When you do get a response it is always well-informed and appropriate. I would say they've been trending better over time with this.
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In-Person Training
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
I experienced only on-line training, but the trainers were very professional and competent. Maybe it could be more useful if they also have an experience in projects because sometimes they didn't have a real project experience to communicate to the students. Anyway, it was very interesting and I learned many thing that's very difficoult (or maybe impossible!) to have by myself, aven if I have more than 10 years of Splunk activity experience.
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Online Training
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
It was very interesting and I learned many thing that's very difficoult (or maybe impossible!) to have by myself. The only problem was that, when I worked with the Splunk Professional Services, I found some difference between the training contents and the information from PS. In addition is required a long experience on Splunk Enterprise for the data ingestion part, in other words I'm able to work with ES because I'm worling on Splunk since 11 years, otherwise I'd some problem.
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Implementation Rating
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
It's a fantatic product and it was very useful the presence of Splunk Professional Services for the Design Phase and the final Health Check.
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Alternatives Considered
SolarWinds
Fortianalzyer can only do logs from FortiGate so usefulness is limited. Elasticsearch was a lot slower than Solarwinds and the filters were a lot harder to set up and use. The connectors for SEM were far more stable.
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Cisco
Splunk enterprise is the only solution that we’ve been able to identify that provides risk based alerting, which allows our SOC to reduce analyst fatigue which would be a huge problem without it. Before RBA, there were thousands of alerts a day and it was impossible to review all of them
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
for my exterience, unit pricing and billing frequency are correct. As I already said, I hint to have more discount flexibility, expecially with new customers, because there are competitors less expensive and very aggressive that are dangerous. In addition the possibility to don't pay the license for the development period could be a very interesting feature for the final customers.
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Scalability
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
- 8 out of 10 and took 2 for the data pipeline and administration part. Even if you'd like to improve yourself or your team, you have to pay a lot of money and it could be more than GIAC education + cert. - Normalization for Data models and CPU-based searches can be a problem sometimes.
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Professional Services
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
I had a fantastic experience with Splunk Professional Services: they worked with us in our last SON project (a SOC migration for a very large customer) and helped to build a multi tenent environment even if ES isn't a multi tenant platform. Th Splunk PS was a very professional and competent people, he is italian and was able to speak with our italian customers.
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Return on Investment
SolarWinds
  • For the price, it produced a decent value. It did a lot of the easy stuff well. I can't give any specific data given the objective of the product was to monitor very basic events in the environment.
  • There are free options that can do a better job.
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Cisco
  • We have a 100% success rate on all our ES implementations due to the amazing documentation and Splunk enablement on the subject.
  • Our Splunk ES business has grown 100% YoY for the last 3 years.
  • In terms of long term management and maintenance, ES has been highly stable and predictable, reducing our overhead on costly services team for ad hoc maintenance work.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Screenshots

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