We compared IBM Security QRadar and Microsoft Sentinel based on our users' reviews across several parameters.
IBM Security QRadar is praised for its advanced threat detection, customizable dashboards, and integration capabilities, while users mention concerns about its complex interface and lack of flexibility. Microsoft Sentinel is highlighted for its affordability, intuitive interface, and automation options, with users mentioning the need for improved customization and integration features. Users find value in both products, with IBM Security QRadar focusing on comprehensive features and advanced threat detection, while Microsoft Sentinel offers affordability and streamlined incident response capabilities.
Features: IBM Security QRadar excels in customizable dashboards and seamless integration with security tools, offering real-time threat detection. Microsoft Sentinel stands out for its advanced threat visibility and streamlined incident response with machine learning capabilities.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Security QRadar has a higher setup cost, with some users mentioning the need for experienced personnel. Licensing is seen as complex but offers flexibility. Microsoft Sentinel has affordable, minimal setup costs and flexible, easy-to-understand licensing options. With comprehensive features and an intuitive interface, IBM Security QRadar offers great value in detecting and managing threats. Users highlighted its ability to streamline operations and improve security posture. Microsoft Sentinel users also praised its positive impact on organizations, noting benefits like improved security, reduced incident response time, and enhanced threat visibility. Despite some initial setup complexities, they appreciate its ease of use and integration with other Microsoft products.
Room for Improvement: IBM Security QRadar could improve user interface intuitiveness, performance speed, customization flexibility, and support resources. Microsoft Sentinel users seek better platform usability, customization options, integration with other tools, enhanced reporting, and improved documentation.
Deployment and customer support: Users found IBM Security QRadar quicker to deploy and set up compared to Microsoft Sentinel, which, although quicker to deploy, had a more complex setup process, according to some users. IBM Security QRadar's highly knowledgeable and responsive customer service provides prompt assistance. Microsoft Sentinel's customer service is praised for its effectiveness and quick issue resolution, creating positive user experiences.
The summary above is based on 144 interviews we conducted recently with IBM Security QRadar and Microsoft Sentinel users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"It has a lot of good correlation rules. From a customer's point of view, it is one of the best solutions because you don't need to create correlation rules from scratch. You just review them and customize them as you want."
"The stability is good."
"It saves a lot of time. We integrate the customer's firewall with all their networking devices."
"The features that I have found most valuable in QRadar are its data enrichment, use case creations, and adding references - those kinds of features are very good. Also QRadar's event filtration and device integration are perfect."
"This console gives you the entire view, which makes life easier and allows you to take precautionary measures."
"Technical support is good overall."
"A nice benefit is when we go to the process of selecting our youth cases, they go by building blocks. QRadar links it to building blocks."
"Vulnerability data, network data and the like, are part of correlation and detection."
"The connectivity and analytics are great."
"In Azure Sentinel, we have found, they do have a store in their capability. AI and intelligence features. We found that to be very helpful for us because some other things we do need to integrate again or find another vendor for the store"
"The most valuable feature is the alert notifications, which are categorized by severity levels: informational, low, medium, and high."
"The most valuable feature is the onboarding of the workloads. You can see all that has been onboarded in your account on the dashboards."
"It is easy to implement (turn on) - does need a skilled analyst to develop queries and playbooks."
"Microsoft Sentinel comes preloaded with templates for teaching and analytics rules."
"Sentinel has an intuitive, user-friendly way to visualize the data properly. It gives me a solid overview of all the logs. We get a more detailed view that I can't get from the other SIEM tools. It has some IP and URL-specific allow listing"
"Sentinel's most important feature is the ability to centralize all the logs in one place. There's no need to search multiple systems for information."
"The tech support is not that good."
"The user interface is a bit difficult to get used to."
"QRadar's performance has room for improvement because it cannot handle the volume. I need massive amounts of logs from various devices in our existing network architecture. IBM needs to improve QRadar's capacity to handle more logs."
"A lot of information that we receive for the devices is IP-based, but it would help if we could have a default dashboard in which we can add more details about the assets for which we are receiving the information. For example, if it is a Windows or Linux device, we only get the IP for that particular device. We don't really get the name and other details of that particular device. For that, you have to drill down into your own asset management system. It would be good to have a place where we can probably add this information so that we don't have to look into other tools."
"IBM QRadar has outdated technology, and this is its area for improvement. When you try to implement an analytic expression, it's not updated. The solution doesn't support newer technologies, and it doesn't update regularly. For example, around the world, others implement new technologies, while IBM updates later than others."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup due to bandwidth issues."
"The IBM support can be better."
"I have noticed the interface has room for improvement."
"They only classify alerts into three categories: high, medium, and low. So, from the user's point of view, having another critical category would be awesome."
"I believe one of the challenges I encountered was the absence of live training sessions, even with the option to pay for them."
"Sentinel can be used in two ways. With other tools like QRadar, I don't need to run queries. Using Sentinel requires users to learn KQL to run technical queries and check things. If they don't know KQL, they can't fully utilize the solution."
"While I appreciate the UI itself and the vast amount of information available on the platform, I'm finding the overall user experience to be frustrating due to frequent disconnections and the requirement to repeatedly re-authenticate."
"Sentinel could improve its ticketing and management. A few customers I have worked with liked to take the data created in Sentinel. You can make some basic efforts around that, but the customers wanted to push it to a third-party system so they could set up a proper ticketing management system, like ServiceNow, Jira, etc."
"Improvement-wise, I would like to see more integration with third-party solutions or old-school antivirus products that have some kind of logging capability. I wouldn't mind having that exposed within Sentinel. We do have situations where certain companies have bought licensing or have made an investment in a product, and that product will be there for the next two or three years. To be able to view information from those legacy products would be great. We can then better leverage the Sentinel solution and its capabilities."
"Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way... Also, the fields or columns could be improved. Sometimes, it is not giving the desired results and there is a blank field."
"Sentinel's alerts and notifications are not fully optimized for mobile devices. The overall reporting and the analytics processes for the end user should also be improved. Also, the compatibility and availability of data sources and reports are not always perfect."
IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews while Microsoft Sentinel is ranked 2nd in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 85 reviews. IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Sentinel is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM Security QRadar writes "A highly stable and scalable solution that provides good technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Sentinel writes "Gives a comprehensive and holistic view of the ecosystem and improves visibility and the ability to respond". IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and Sentinel, whereas Microsoft Sentinel is most compared with AWS Security Hub, Splunk Enterprise Security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Elastic Security and Wazuh. See our IBM Security QRadar vs. Microsoft Sentinel report.
See our list of best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors and best Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) vendors.
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