Release notes for Splunk Enterprise Security

Upgrading Splunk Enterprise Security to version 8.x is a one-way operation. The upgrade process doesn't automatically back up the app, its content, or its data. Perform a full backup of the search head, including the KV Store, before initiating the Splunk Enterprise Security upgrade process.

When you upgrade to Splunk Enterprise Security version 8.x, you can no longer access any investigations created prior to the upgrade. To save archives of your investigation data, back up and restore your existing Splunk Enterprise Security instance.

If you need to revert back to the version that previously existed on your search head, you must restore the previous version of Splunk Enterprise Security from a backup.

See Upgrade Splunk Enterprise Security.

Other important notes for upgrading include the following:

• You cannot upload Splunk Enterprise Security 8.x on an on-premises deployment of Splunk Enterprise 10.x using the UI. You must install Splunk Enterprise Security 8.x using the command line. See Install Splunk Enterprise Security from the command line.
• Splunk Enterprise Security in a search head cluster environment uses an installer that creates tokens and turns on token authorization if it is not available. Post-installation, the installer deletes the tokens. If an error occurs, contact Splunk Support to delete any residual tokens.
• The Splunk Enterprise Security Health app is installed but is turned off for all Splunk Cloud customers. This app is turned on by the Splunk Cloud Platform only during upgrades to ensure that the stacks get upgraded faster. Do not turn on the Splunk Enterprise Security Health app.

Sharing telemetry usage data is different from sharing threat data. Sharing of threat data in Splunk Enterprise Security is only introduced for Splunk Enterprise Security Hosted Service Offering (cloud) customers with a standard terms contract renewed or created after January 10, 2025. For more information, see Share threat data in Splunk Enterprise Security

• Splunk Enterprise Security version 8.x is compatible only with specific versions of the Splunk platform. See Splunk products version compatibility matrix for details.
• Current versions of Splunk Enterprise Security only support TAXII version 2.0 and TAXII version 2.0.

The following features have been deprecated from Splunk Enterprise Security 8.x:

• Configuring the investigation type macro is no longer available.
• Incident Review row expansion is no longer available.
• Enhanced workflows are no longer available.
• Sequence templates are no longer available.
• The Investigation bar, Investigation Workbench, and Investigation dashboard from the Splunk Enterprise Security user interface (UI) are replaced by the Mission Control UI.
• Service level agreements (SLAs) and role-based incident type filtering are not available.
• The Content management page was updated to remove the following types of content: Workbench Profile, Workbench Panel, and Workbench Tab.
• Workbench and workbench related views such as ess_investigation_list, ess_investigation_overview, and ess_investigation have been removed.
• Capabilities such as edit_timeline and manage_all_investigations have been removed.
• The Comments feature is replaced by an enhanced capability to add notes.
• In Splunk Enterprise Security version 7.3, admins can turn on a setting to require analysts to leave a comment with a minimum character length after updating a notable event. In Splunk Enterprise Security version 8.x, you can no longer require a note when an analyst updates a finding in the analyst queue.

Technology-specific add-ons are supported differently than the add-ons that make up the Splunk Enterprise Security framework. For more information on the support provided for add-ons, see Support for Splunk Enterprise Security and provided add-ons in the Release Notes manual.

To ensure that the Splunk Enterprise Security app works correctly, turn on the following add-ons. If any of the following add-ons aren't turned on, Splunk Support gets automatically notified and ensures that all the required add-ons are turned on automatically.

• DA-ESS-AccessProtection
• DA-ESS-EndpointProtection
• DA-ESS-IdentityManagement
• DA-ESS-NetworkProtection
• DA-ESS-ThreatIntelligence
• SA-AccessProtection
• SA-AuditAndDataProtection
• SA-EndpointProtection
• SA-IdentityManagement
• SA-NetworkProtection
• SA-ThreatIntelligence
• Splunk_SA_CIM
• Splunk_SA_Scientific_Python_linux_x86_64
• SplunkEnterpriseSecuritySuite
• Splunk_ML_Toolkit

Splunk Enterprise Security no longer includes many of the technology add-ons in the Splunk Enterprise Security package. Instead, you can download the technology add-ons that you need directly from Splunkbase. This change improves the performance of Splunk ES by reducing the number of unnecessary enabled add-ons, and allows you to install the most appropriate and updated versions of add-ons when you install Splunk ES.

The following technology add-ons are removed from the installer, but still supported:

• Splunk Add-on for Blue Coat ProxySG
• Splunk Add-on for McAfee
• Splunk Add-on for Juniper
• Splunk Add-on for Microsoft Windows
• Splunk Add-on for Oracle Database
• Splunk Add-on for OSSEC
• Splunk Add-on for RSA SecurID
• Splunk Add-on for Sophos
• Splunk Add-on for FireSIGHT
• Splunk Add-on for Symantec Endpoint Protection
• Splunk Add-on for Unix and Linux
• Splunk Add-on for Websense Content Gateway

The following technology add-ons are removed from the installer, supported for the next year, but are deprecated and will reach end of support one year from the release date of this Enterprise Security version:

• TA-airdefense
• TA-alcatel
• TA-cef
• TA-fortinet
• TA-ftp
• TA-nmap
• TA-tippingpoint
• TA-trendmicro

The following libraries are included in this release:

• Splunk_ML_Toolkit-5.3.0-1631633293630.tgz
• Splunk_SA_Scientific_Python_linux_x86_64-3.0.2-0
• Splunk_SA_Scientific_Python_windows_x86_64-3.0.0