SolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.
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Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Splunk is software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated big data, via a web-style interface. It captures, indexes and correlates real-time data in a searchable repository from which it can generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards and visualizations.
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Pricing
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Splunk Enterprise
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Splunk Enterprise
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Splunk Enterprise
Features
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Splunk Enterprise
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
Ratings
14% above category average
Splunk Enterprise
7.1
Ratings
9% below category average
Centralized event and log data collection
9.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Correlation
8.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Event and log normalization/management
8.00 Ratings
9.50 Ratings
Deployment flexibility
10.00 Ratings
7.00 Ratings
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools
Solarwinds SEM is great for generating reports for investigation purposes. Once you set up the connectors you can walk away and the product runs without needing maintenance. It was however pretty difficult to create the reports and alerts when now starting out and it can be very intimidating for new users.
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.
SolarWinds easily provides the much needed visibily into changes in an Active Directory (AD) environment. Email alerting can be configured to alert a team if an account is locked out, disabled by another users, or if users and/or computers accounts are created.
SolarWinds allowed a searchable audit feature. Microsoft Windows can be configured to log many different parts of a system, but search those logs can be difficult. SEM allows you to search for specific users or events.
Compared to other SIEMs, there are features that are missing. Machine learning, automatic event correlation, ability to correlate multiple sources together.
The UI is clunky, and the *New* event log analyzer page felt really disjointed from the rest of the product.
In my experience, the dashboards were almost unusable. They persisted across login per device, and even then they sometimes would reset and go back to the ''Getting Started'' look.
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.
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
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.
It is very good - but you get what you pay for. The intent is not for a Fortune 500 that needs more "heavy lifting" with SolarWinds Security Event Manager & for whom the price tag is not (much of) a consideration.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The compare well against the others - the pricing models for all but Splunk (free version) are based on EPS/TB consumed... the problem they pose is guesstimating the price tag per month. SolarWinds Security Event Manager gets around that.
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.
It saves a lot of time when we had issues trying to figure out where the user account lockout was coming from.
With it being an affordable SIEM, we are able to have the ability to do the actions associated with a SIEM and the advantages of not “breaking the bank account”.
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.
