CrowdStrike vs. Splunk: Which SIEM Solution is Right for You

Security information and event management solutions are critical components of any organization’s cybersecurity infrastructure. The combination of login monitoring and remediation capabilities provides invaluable protection and allows businesses to address potential threats before they cause any real damage.

With this, CrowdStrike and Splunk bring two distinct approaches to their SIEM solutions. On the one hand, CrowdStrike’s expertise as an endpoint detection and response leader is evident with its Falcon Next-Gen SIEM and unified Falcon platform. Meanwhile, Splunk’s Enterprise Security is considered at the forefront of the SIEM space and emphasizes comprehensive visibility and enhanced detection.

In this article, we match these two providers against each other to see which SIEM solution is right for you.

Recommended Alternative: CrowdStrike CrowdStrike Falcon® Next-Gen SIEM delivers real-time security insights with unmatched speed, low cost and local detection capabilities, improving how SOC teams operate. Unparalleled speed and performance: CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM offers 150x faster search performance than older solutions like Splunk, enabling SOC analysts to quickly investigate and respond to threats. Splunk’s complex infrastructure can lead to slow queries, forcing analysts to wait and potentially miss critical vulnerabilities or stalled investigations. Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Falcon Next-Gen SIEM provides scalable log storage and search capabilities with 80% lower TCO, allowing organizations to incorporate all relevant data sources without unexpected costs. Splunk’s high data ingestion and storage fees often make long-term logging prohibitively expensive, limiting visibility and increasing costs. Proven, integrated detection: As an integrated part of the CrowdStrike Falcon Cybersecurity Platform, Falcon Next-Gen SIEM offers detection outside of endpoints, cloud, identity and data supported by native threat intelligence and automated alert context. Got it. Splunk requires manual correlation rule management and relies on third-party data sources, which can lead to high false positive rates and slow response times. Learn more about Falcon Next-Gen SIEM.

CrowdStrike vs Splunk: Comparison Table

	Crowd strike	Splunk
Initial price	Contact sales for pricing.	Contact sales for pricing.
2024 IDC MarketScape SIEM for Enterprises Report	Market player	The leader
Integration	500+	2,200+
User Experience (Ranked by Gartner)	4.5 out of 5	4.5 out of 5
Free trial	Can request a product tour.	Can request a test drive.

CrowdStrike vs. Splunk: Pricing

CrowdStrike Pricing

CrowdStrike does not provide clear pricing for its Falcon Next-Gen SIEM platform. With that said, I recommend contacting CrowdStrike’s sales team directly for a full quotation and pricing details. Personally, I find it a little odd because of the obvious cost of its EDR and XDR offerings.

However, they have plenty of trial and demo options:

• Interactive demo that is fully accessible to all users. Falcon provides a slideshow-like tour of Next-Gen SIEM.
• Request a test drive; Provide organization details for more in-depth trial and access.

There are also several video demos on next-generation SIEM. They have videos on dashboard overview, how to maximize workflow automation and data onboarding.

Splunk Pricing

Similarly, Splunk’s Enterprise Security SIEM does not display official pricing on its product page. Like CrowdStrike, reaching out to the Splunk sales team is the best way to get pricing information.

Splunk also provides several useful tours and demos:

• guided product tours; Requested through official website.
• Splunk Enterprise Security Product Brief; Available for public viewing and download via the product page.

On the Splunk Enterprise Security page, you can also access SIEM guides, Splunk use cases, and eBooks on threat-based alerting, after going through the initial signup.

CrowdStrike vs Splunk: Feature Comparison

Area of ​​focus

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge the difference between CrowdStrike and Splunk’s product focus in relation to their SIEM solutions. Although CrowdStrike is a household name in cybersecurity, it is best known for its endpoint security, EDR, and extended detection and response services. In fact, its CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM has only been around for less than a year — which isn’t a knock on the standard but a key note for this comparison.

Splunk, on the other hand, has been in the SIEM industry for over a decade, recognized as a global SIEM leader. Back in 2013. Splunk Enterprise Security alone is also now on its eighth version, showing a big difference in the maturity of the two products.

If your organization prefers a provider with a sole focus on SIEM, Splunk is probably a better choice. On the other hand, CrowdStrike can be a solid choice if you want a new solution or if your business already has CrowdStrike heavily integrated into your security stack.

Risk detection

For threat detection, CrowdStrike Next-Gen SIEM uses its Falcon platform to integrate both its own global threat intelligence and third-party data sources. It has AI-powered identity across endpoints, cloud, and identity sources to ensure strong security and overall visibility.

Meanwhile, Splunk Enterprise Security implements threat-based alerts that ensure security analysts are focused on the highest priority threats and are not distracted by thousands of less important alerts. This helps reduce analyst burnout, ensuring that all imminent threats can be quickly mitigated by security operations center personnel.

Independent assessment

Judging by recent independent reports, both CrowdStrike Next-Gen SIEM and Splunk Enterprise Security perform well by industry standards.

i 2024 IDC Market Landscape: Worldwide SIEM for Enterprise The vendor report named CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM a major player, while Splunk was recognized as a leader. In the evaluation, Splunk was praised for its deployment flexibility for cloud and hybrid environments, as well as its workload pricing that can accommodate different budgets and business sizes.

For CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM, its smart integration with the Falcon XDR platform for alert, event, and security log management was a highlight of the IDC report, especially for existing CrowdStrike XDR customers.

Splunk was also named a leader in this. 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management For the tenth year in a row, being recognized alongside major providers such as Microsoft and IBM. It’s clear that Splunk has an advantage in terms of overall industry experience, especially in the SIEM category.

In contrast, CrowdStrike has yet to be included in Gartner’s SIEM evaluation. That being said, I find it impressive how CrowdStrike was named in the IDC SIEM report with less than 12 months of availability under its belt.

Integration

In terms of integration, both SIEM solutions allow compatibility with a number of native and third-party software.

CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM supports more than 500 data sources and integrations. These include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud for Cloud/Infrastructure, as well as Palo Alto Networks, Trellix, and Cisco for Firewall/Network.

Meanwhile, Splunk Enterprise Security offers an impressive 2,200+ software integrations and 2,800+ partner and community-developed applications. This includes AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, OpenShift, Kubernetes, Kafka, and Apache Cassandra. It also features native integration with Splunk’s security orchestration, automation, and response automation playbooks and actions.

Advantages and Disadvantages of CrowdStrike

Advantages of CrowdStrike

• CrowdStrike integrates well with Falcon XDR.
• AI-powered threat detection.
• Smooth deployment.

Disadvantages of CrowdStrike

• A relatively new SIEM provider.

Pros and cons of Splunk

Benefits of Splunk

• An industry leader in the SIEM space since 2013.
• 2,200+ software integrations.
• Simple yet effective user interface.

Disadvantages of Splunk

• Can be expensive depending on business size.

See: Everything you need to know about the malvertising cybersecurity threat. (TechRepublic Premium)

Should your business use CrowdStrike or Splunk?

As of November 2024, Splunk Enterprise Security is the better choice for most businesses looking to invest in a standard SIEM solution.

It has been the top SIEM since 2013 and is generally considered a default option to consider, regardless of the size of the organization. This is evident from its massive 2,200+ integrations for unified threat detection, investigation, and response. and positive recognition by most independent firms evaluating SIEM providers.

That’s not to say CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM isn’t a viable choice on its own. Less than a year into its existence, it has immediately offered attractive benefits such as strong integration with local CrowdStrike services and telemetry and access to its global threat intelligence database.

Procedure

My comparison of CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM and Splunk Enterprise Security included an analysis of their respective features, software differences and overall value proposition.

In particular, I took into account some of the main considerations of SIEMs, such as their primary focus, threat detection capabilities, independent evaluation, and supporting integration.

Research for this article was a combination of reviewing official documentation, advertised use cases, and available demos. In addition, user testimonials on sites such as Gartner and Reddit were also considered to form my final recommendations.