Splunk Enterprise

My usual use cases for Splunk Enterprise Platform  involve all NOC and SOC activities, where SOC-related alerts will be aggregated with NOC-related alerts, allowing for correlation between them, including use cases such as abnormal travel and anomaly detection, all of which are detected by Splunk Enterprise Platform .

For instance, if there is a DDoS attack indicated by an anomaly in the traffic when WAF  is integrated, an alert is generated in Splunk Enterprise Platform, which our L1 and L2 teams will then visualize and remediate based on the alert.

I do not use Splunk Enterprise Platform's Machine Learning Toolkit directly, but my team utilizes it.

Splunk Enterprise Platform's Machine Learning Toolkit has helped us with predictive analytics in our organization significantly, as it automates the anomaly detection that previously required our L1 and L2 teams to spend three to four hours on.

It immediately triggers alerts upon detecting patterns such as WAF  spikes or suspicious login behavior, allowing our L1 to avoid manual analysis and triaging. The predictive analysis reduces false positives, enabling our analysts to close tickets swiftly—previously taking two to three days, and now they close them before breaching the SLA due to effective pattern discovery and outlier detection.

Splunk Enterprise Platform's Machine Learning Toolkit is efficient in detecting abnormal login attempts and brute force attacks, effectively aiding our proactive defense planning through advanced analytics and anomaly detection.

Splunk Enterprise Platform's most valuable features include its integration with AI, as Cisco, which has taken Splunk Enterprise Platform recently, is building up AI functionalities, enhancing remediation capabilities and the orchestration part in the market. Additionally, Splunk Enterprise Platform shows the correct logs at the correct time, and inventory management is very good.

I assess the effectiveness of Splunk Enterprise Platform in detecting anomalies and preventing system outages as very strong; for over two to three decades, it has provided centralized log visibility, real-time monitoring, and analytics correlation, which is robust for threat detection and incident investigation.

Splunk Enterprise Platform's machine learning capability of the toolkit predicts trends and reduces many false positives, making Splunk Enterprise Platform an essential tool for both SOC and network operations, where it effectively detects anomalies that other SIEM  tools cannot.

Splunk Enterprise Platform's personalized dashboards are superb, as I have been experimenting with them extensively, and new features have enhanced their quality, making them particularly effective for presentations to leadership, including direct engagement with the CISO.

In terms of improvement for Splunk Enterprise Platform, as more companies embrace AI, adding more AI automations is crucial and could parallel what competitors such as Xplain are doing. Managing duplicate alerts efficiently can optimize costs, as the current license-based data ingestion can quickly escalate if duplicate data is fed.

Better filtering of unnecessary log sources could greatly interest clients by demonstrating cost efficiency. From an architectural standpoint, data onboarding, normalization, performance, and scalability improvements would be beneficial, particularly in optimizing search speed and query execution to handle larger searches efficiently.

I have been working with Splunk Enterprise Platform for the last 10 years as a Splunk certified power user and advanced user, and along with Splunk Enterprise Platform, I am using Palo Alto's Cortex XSOAR  and Azure Sentinel  continuously for over 10 and 12 or more years.

I evaluate the stability and reliability of Splunk Enterprise Platform as very high; we utilize it for both SOC and NOC operations, and our L1 and L2 teams get real-time alerts and query the SPL effectively without delays that other SIEM  solutions may impose.

Splunk Enterprise Platform is scalable; we have already adapted it from SOC to NOC operations while maintaining good indexing practices that prevent overload and ensure clear searches, maximizing performance in large SPL queries.

My L1 team regularly communicates with Splunk Enterprise Platform's technical support, which is very helpful.

I would rate the technical support from Splunk Enterprise Platform around eight on a scale from one to ten, where one would be the worst and ten would be the best.

Before using Splunk Enterprise Platform, I utilized Azure Sentinel  in my previous company at Deloitte, prior to leaving.

Although I did not participate in the initial setup, I provided mentoring for the team under me who managed the implementation because I have spent 14 years in the industry, which included hands-on implementations earlier in my career.

Splunk Enterprise Platform's implementation is very straightforward; I do not feel there is a significant difference from the implementation point of view, as everything is clearly documented by Splunk Enterprise Platform.

We are a customer of Splunk Enterprise Platform, currently at Aramex, and we bought a vendor from Capgemini who has actually implemented Splunk Enterprise Platform for us, so we are not directly linked with Splunk Enterprise Platform but rely on our vendor to use Splunk Enterprise Platform for us.

Splunk Enterprise Platform's dashboards significantly improve data interpretation, providing immediate real-time visibility on top trending alerts and live data without needing to run queries repeatedly. They aggregate metrics and highlight trends such as threat overviews and MITRE ATT&CK mapping, which reduces the workload for our L1 and L2 teams.

Pre-built alerts for anomalies in login attempts, failed attempts, or geolocation mapping are very visible in Splunk Enterprise Platform's dashboard, which plays a critical role in providing real-time visibility into security events and network activities.

Splunk Enterprise Platform's application management feature enhances end-user experiences by providing organized dashboards that monitor application usage and configurations, facilitating faster detection and query execution. It logs metrics into applications that reveal usage patterns, anomaly detections, and attack occurrences, while also ensuring proper governance and versioning of applications.

I consider Splunk Enterprise Platform an expensive tool because budget constraints from license-based data ingestion costs are significant. Costs can escalate rapidly when duplicate data is processed, which Splunk Enterprise Platform can identify to help clients save directly on unnecessary spending.

I leverage Splunk Enterprise Platform for advanced threat detection, which is critical for our SOC operations. Threat intelligence and detection are vital, especially since Cisco's acquisition of Splunk Enterprise Platform has integrated Talos into it, enhancing our ability to monitor for IP reputation and potential attacks, while also keeping an eye on advisories regarding application vulnerabilities. I would rate this product overall at a nine out of ten.

Ingesting massive amounts of machine-generated data and running real-time searches to identify patterns, anomalies, or threats related to specific security issues was how I used Splunk Enterprise Platform for detection and investigation. The most significant aspect, if I must prioritize, is the data ingestion capability. Splunk Enterprise Platform usually collects authentication logs from various sources such as Windows event logs and SSH, which relates to Linux logs, and some web application-based logs as well. Apart from that, I use it for detection logic. The main search I use is Search Processing Language, based upon the queries I provide related to the machines I monitor.

Mostly for brute-force detection, I use it for monitoring multiple failed login attempts from a single source or multiple IP sources followed by a successful login, which often indicates a compromised account. I also use it for lateral movement and privilege escalations. For privilege escalations, it involves detecting when a normal user is added to a high-privilege group, such as Domain Admins. Additionally, I have capabilities related to IT operations, which involve web traffic analysis, mostly identifying slow-loading web pages or sudden spikes, errors such as 404 or 403 Forbidden, or even 500 errors.

When a specific condition is met, such as any brute-force attack happening, it is easy to investigate the alert, particularly in Splunk Enterprise Platform. Integration is a notable aspect of the features in Splunk Enterprise Platform.

Before using Splunk Enterprise Platform, I used LogRhythm , but after initiating Splunk Enterprise Platform, I noticed several positive impacts in my organization.