Splunk - Visibility into What's Really Going on in Your Network
April 17, 2017
Splunk - Visibility into What's Really Going on in Your Network
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Splunk Enterprise
Splunk is being used to capture logs from all Windows, Linux, and firewall devices in our enterprise. Currently it is being used by the IT infrastructure department only, but our hope is to make it available to other departments to follow trends in our business. Splunk addresses the issue of visibility into the network. It actually gives IT professionals access to view what is taking place on the network, and it provides something to look at in order to address issues occurring behind the scenes.
- It gathers logs very well from almost all machine types - most SIEM related products don't do this quite as well.
- It provides visuals to the user, giving you the ability to transform logs into visual charts (e.g. pie charts, graphs, tables, etc.).
- Splunk is very quick in reporting and alerting on anomalies. There is little delay.
- Splunk can be very expensive, and it is best to size out your environment first before procuring. Planning is key, and make sure to buy a license that is at least 2-3 times what you think you need.
- There is a learning curve to Splunk. It takes a bit to get up to speed with the application.
- Support is very good, but they will almost never tell you to ways to not use up your license. I had to figure that out myself, and ended up cutting out some useless logs that used over 50 % of my license.
- 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.
- Qradar
Splunk is proving to be a formidable replacement for Qradar, which we had as our previous SIEM. Qradar was powerful, but not easy to customize and quite limited. Splunk is not per se a "SIEM" but it can be in the way you used it. Also there is an Enterprise Security App that is available to buy and sit on top of Splunk, and that will take care of any concerns with needing a full-fledged SIEM. Splunk wins.