AWS CloudTrail vs Splunk

Overview

AWS CloudTrail

Stacks304

Followers280

Votes14

Splunk

Stacks772

Followers1.0K

Votes20

AWS CloudTrail vs Splunk: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare AWS CloudTrail and Splunk, two popular platforms used for log management and analysis. Both of these platforms serve as essential tools for organizations in monitoring and securing their systems. However, there are significant differences between them that make each platform unique in its own way. Let's dive into the key differences between AWS CloudTrail and Splunk.

1. Scalability and Deployment Model:

AWS CloudTrail is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It offers seamless scalability, allowing users to process and analyze logs from a vast number of AWS services. It follows a cloud-based deployment model, where the platform automatically scales resources based on the log volume, ensuring efficient log processing.

Splunk, on the other hand, provides both on-premises and cloud deployment options. While it offers scalability, it requires users to manually provision and manage the necessary hardware and resources for handling log processing. This may involve additional costs and efforts for maintaining the infrastructure.

2. Log Data Sources:

AWS CloudTrail specializes in capturing and logging API activity for AWS services. It provides detailed information about the API calls made within an AWS account, giving visibility into user actions, resource modifications, and system events. It is optimized for AWS-specific log data.

In contrast, Splunk is a versatile log management platform that can ingest and analyze logs from various sources, including infrastructure, applications, and devices. It supports not only AWS logs but also logs from on-premises infrastructure, third-party applications, and custom sources. This flexibility allows organizations to centralize log data from different environments into a single platform.

3. Integration with Other Tools:

AWS CloudTrail tightly integrates with other AWS services, making it an integral part of the AWS ecosystem. It seamlessly integrates with services like AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and AWS CloudWatch, providing enhanced security and monitoring capabilities. This integration allows organizations to leverage CloudTrail logs for advanced analysis and automation within the AWS environment.

Splunk, on the other hand, offers extensive integration capabilities with a wide range of third-party tools and technologies. It can integrate with various security tools, data sources, and IT operations management platforms, enabling comprehensive log analysis and correlation across different systems. This integration capability makes Splunk a powerful tool for holistic log management.

4. Administration and Security:

AWS CloudTrail simplifies the administration and security aspects by providing a managed service. It handles the underlying infrastructure, log storage, and monitoring, which reduces the operational burden on the users. AWS also ensures the security of CloudTrail logs by employing encryption and IAM-based access controls.

In contrast, Splunk requires users to manage the infrastructure and security measures themselves, especially in on-premises deployments. This includes securing the servers, implementing access controls, and configuring encryption for log data. While it provides flexibility for organizations with specific security requirements, it also adds additional responsibilities for the users.

5. Pricing Model:

AWS CloudTrail follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where users are billed based on the number of events recorded and the amount of data processed and stored. The pricing is transparent and predictable, allowing organizations to budget their log management costs effectively.

Splunk offers a more complex pricing structure. It includes various licensing options based on data volume, user access, and specific features. This complexity may make it challenging for organizations to estimate and control their log management costs accurately.

6. Ecosystem and Community Support:

AWS CloudTrail benefits from being part of the extensive AWS ecosystem, which consists of a vast number of services, documentation, and community support. This ecosystem ensures that CloudTrail remains up-to-date with the latest AWS features and innovations.

Splunk, on the other hand, has a strong community following and an active user base. It has a rich ecosystem of add-ons, apps, and integrations contributed by the community. This ecosystem provides additional functionalities and resources for extending the capabilities of Splunk.

In Summary, AWS CloudTrail and Splunk differ in terms of scalability and deployment model, log data sources, integration capabilities, administration and security, pricing model, and ecosystem support. Organizations should consider these differences while selecting a log management solution that best suits their requirements.

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Advice on AWS CloudTrail, Splunk

Jigar

Security Software Engineer at Cisco

Jul 2, 2020

Needs adviceon

AWS IAM

Amazon EC2

Splunk Cloud

We would like to detect unusual config changes that can potentially cause production outage.

Such as, SecurityGroup new allow/deny rule, AuthZ policy change, Secret key/certificate rotation, IP subnet add/drop. The problem is the source of all of these activities is different, i.e., AWS IAM, Amazon EC2, internal prod services, envoy sidecar, etc.

Which of the technology would be best suitable to detect only IMP events (not all activity) from various sources all workload running on AWS and also Splunk Cloud?

168k views168k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

AWS CloudTrail	Splunk
With CloudTrail, you can get a history of AWS API calls for your account, including API calls made via the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and higher-level AWS services (such as AWS CloudFormation). The AWS API call history produced by CloudTrail enables security analysis, resource change tracking, and compliance auditing. The recorded information includes the identity of the API caller, the time of the API call, the source IP address of the API caller, the request parameters, and the response elements returned by the AWS service.	It provides the leading platform for Operational Intelligence. Customers use it to search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data.
Increased Visibility- CloudTrail provides increased visibility into your user activity by recording AWS API calls. You can answer questions such as, what actions did a given user take over a given time period? For a given resource, which user has taken actions on it over a given time period? What is the source IP address of a given activity? Which activities failed due to inadequate permissions?;Durable and Inexpensive Log File Storage- CloudTrail uses Amazon S3 for log file storage and delivery, so log files are stored durably and inexpensively. You can use Amazon S3 lifecycle configuration rules to further reduce storage costs. For example, you can define rules to automatically delete old log files or archive them to Amazon Glacier for additional savings.;Easy Administration- CloudTrail is a fully managed service; you simply turn on CloudTrail for your account using the AWS Management Console, the Command Line Interface, or the CloudTrail SDK and start receiving CloudTrail log files in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket that you specify.;Reliable- CloudTrail continuously transports events from AWS services using a highly available and fault tolerant processing pipeline.;Timely Delivery- CloudTrail typically delivers events within 15 minutes of the API call.;Log File Aggregation- CloudTrail can be configured to aggregate log files across multiple accounts and regions so that log files are delivered to a single bucket. Please refer to the of the AWS CloudTrail User Guide for detailed instructions.;Notifications for Log File Delivery- CloudTrail can be configured to publish a notification for each log file delivered, thus enabling you to automatically take action upon log file delivery. CloudTrail uses the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) for notifications.;Choice of Partner Solutions- Multiple partners including AlertLogic, Boundary, Loggly, Splunk and Sumologic offer integrated solutions to analyze CloudTrail log files. These solutions include features like change tracking, troubleshooting, and security analysis.	Predict and prevent problems with one unified monitoring experience; Streamline your entire security stack with Splunk as the nerve center; Detect, investigate and diagnose problems easily with end-to-end observability
Statistics
Stacks 304	Stacks 772
Followers 280	Followers 1.0K
Votes 14	Votes 20
Pros & Cons
Pros 7 Very easy setup 3 Good integrations with 3rd party tools 2 Very powerful 2 Backup to S3	Pros 3 API for searching logs, running reports 3 Alert system based on custom query results 2 Ability to style search results into reports 2 Query engine supports joining, aggregation, stats, etc 2 Dashboarding on any log contents Cons 1 Splunk query language rich so lots to learn
Integrations
Boundary Loggly Splunk Cloud	No integrations available

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