What data formats are supported for ingestion in Splunk ES?

The correct answer highlights that Splunk Enterprise Security supports several widely used data formats, including JSON, XML, CSV, and plain text. These formats are significant for data ingestion because they are structured or semi-structured formats that allow Splunk to efficiently parse and index the data.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight format that is easy for humans to read and write and easy for machines to parse and generate. It's commonly used in web applications and APIs. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is another versatile format used to encode documents and data in a structured format. CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a simple and popular way to represent tabular data, making it easy to ingest large datasets. Plain text files are less structured but still widely utilized for logging and data storage.

In contrast, the other options include formats that are either not typically supported or are less suitable for direct ingestion into Splunk. For example, formats like JPEG, PNG, DOCX, XLSX, PDF, and HTML involve binary content or are complex formats that are not directly parsable as structured data by Splunk. While some of these may contain text or structured data, they require additional processing or conversion to be effectively used within Splunk