We compared IBM Security QRadar and Splunk Enterprise Security across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Ease of Deployment: IBM Security QRadar’s setup can be more challenging and time-consuming compared to Splunk Enterprise Security. Some users found both solutions easy to install, but IBM Security QRadar took several weeks or even months, while Splunk Enterprise Security could be set up in just a day.
Features: IBM Security QRadar is praised for its ability to detect threats and its ease of use. It provides customizable rules, real-time network monitoring, and competitive pricing. Splunk Enterprise Security stands out in its ability to capture and analyze various data streams. It offers valuable features like a search function, session reports, and graphing capabilities.
Room for Improvement: IBM Security QRadar could enhance its pricing, threat identification, plugins, and threat detection, EPS challenge, training, and technical support. Splunk Enterprise Security has room for improvement in its search algorithm, licensing model, technical support, AI capabilities, pricing, and machine learning algorithms.
Pricing: IBM Security QRadar’s cost differs based on the organization's requirements and structure. Certain users perceive it as reasonable, while others view it as costly. Similarly, Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is subjective, as some users find it expensive while others find it reasonable.
ROI: Both Splunk Enterprise Security and IBM Security QRadar are cost-effective solutions with a favorable ROI. QRadar offers user behavior analytics and employee profiling. Splunk enhances security measures and is known for its flexibility and ability to provide global observability.
Service and Support: Both IBM Security QRadar and Splunk Enterprise Security have received varying feedback regarding their customer service and support. Users have commended the staff's expertise and responsiveness for both products. However, there have been complaints about slow response times and a lack of expertise.
Comparison Results: IBM Security QRadar and Splunk Enterprise Security have similarities in terms of setup complexity and value in detection capabilities and user-friendliness. IBM Security QRadar offers a wide range of features, including real network monitoring, security orchestration automated response, and risk scoring for user activity. Splunk Enterprise Security is praised for its search function, session reports, and graphing capabilities, as well as scalability and machine learning capabilities. IBM Security QRadar may have an advantage in features and pricing, while Splunk Enterprise Security may have an advantage in search capabilities and scalability.
"The machine learning and artificial intelligence on offer are great."
"The scalability is great. You can put unlimited logs in, as long as you can pay for it. There are commitment tiers, up to six terabytes per day, which is nowhere close to what any one of our customers is running."
"I like the KQL query. It simplifies getting data from the table and seeing the logs. All you need to know are the table names. It's quite easy to build use cases by using KQL."
"The UI of Sentinel is very good and easy to use, even for beginners."
"You can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today... but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer."
"The most valuable features are its threat handling and detection. It's a powerful tool because it's based on machine learning and on the behavior of malware."
"I believe one of the main advantages is Microsoft Sentinel's seamless integration with other Microsoft products."
"The most valuable feature is the onboarding of the workloads. You can see all that has been onboarded in your account on the dashboards."
"Customer service is very good and very helpful."
"The best feature of IBM QRadar is visualization which shows you when there's a spike in the system, and this makes you realize that there's something wrong with the log."
"In addition to using this solution for our security operations center, we are using it for our other customers."
"It comes with many rules disabled. You can tune them and modify them according to your enterprise needs and avoid false positives."
"It's a state-of-the-art product for security information and event management (SIEM)."
"The tool is already automated in many ways, but there are some additional functions which should be automated, like sending an email, mobile notification, and integration of XFS."
"The most valuable features of IBM Security QRadar are flexibility, IBM support, and scalability."
"Improved our organization's TCO."
"It is a one stop shop as a full monitoring and alerting solution for operations and application analysis for most of our back-end systems."
"We did not encounter any issues with scalability. It is almost seamless to add new index (storage) or search (used to analyze the data) nodes to the cluster."
"Splunk Enterprise Security offers valuable features like seamless integration and a SQL-standard Structured Query Language for easy searching."
"It helps streamline troubleshooting and log analysis."
"The product is adept at log mining."
"The correlation search functions that generate all the notables are valuable. That can get pretty complicated, and it handles that pretty well."
"The consolidated overview of all the events that come in through our environment and an easy-to-access interface for all our end users are valuable."
"The solution's newly developed dashboard is pretty amazing."
"Not all information shows up in Sentinel. Sometimes there are items provided in 365 and if you looked in Sentinel you would not see them and therefore think they do not exist. There can be discrepancies between Microsoft tools."
"The built-in SOAR is not really good out-of-the-box. The SOAR relies on logic apps and you almost need to have some kind of developer background to be able to make these logic apps. Most security people cannot develop anything..."
"The playbook is a bit difficult and could be improved."
"There are certain delays. For example, if an alert has been rated on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, it might take up to an hour for that alert to reach Sentinel. This should ideally take no more than one or two seconds."
"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."
"Everyone has their favorites. There is always room for improvement, and everybody will say, "I wish you could do this for me or that for me." It is a personal thing based on how you use the tool. I do not necessarily have those thoughts, and they are probably not really valuable because they are unique to the context of the user, but broadly, where it can continue to improve is by adding more connectors to more systems."
"For certain vendors, some of the data that Microsoft Sentinel captures is redacted due to privacy reasons."
"They're giving us the queries so we can plug them right into Sentinel. They need to have a streamlined process for updating them in the tool and knowing when things are updated and knowing when there are new detections available from Microsoft."
"The IBM support can be better."
"What needs to be improved in IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is the user experience. It's not optimal. Some screens are a bit clunky. The solution needs to be more user-friendly."
"The custom rules could be simplified more or it should be possible to use a different language, other than the ones that the solution is already using. They should add other languages into the mix."
"It is not app based."
"The price of IBM Security QRadar is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The features that could be improved include the licensing model and the dashboards and all those presentations. Overall, the user experience part can be improved."
"IBM needs to invest more into the collaboration with other vendors."
"This solution is on-premise and many customers are moving to the cloud base solution."
"I feel as though a major focus of upcoming releases should be set on Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics, and I would enjoy to see more security focused add-ons and apps developed by the vendor."
"More control with Splunk Cloud as it seems a bit limited. I used to manage an on-premise instance of Splunk Enterprise and really liked having more control over it."
"The integration with all our tool sets felt like we were reinventing the wheel, which was a pain point for us."
"There are a lot of competitive products that are doing better than what Splunk is doing on the analytics side."
"They can incorporate the SOAR solution within the actual product so that we do not require two different products, two different installations, and two different pricing methods. In regards to UBA, I am familiar with the UBA that existed two years ago. I am not updated about it today, but two years ago, UBA required such an amount of data that from a cost perspective, it was not worth it. When you compare it to what you get out of the box with Microsoft Sentinel without additional costs, there is no match."
"Cybersecurity and infrastructure monitoring have room for improvement."
"The analytics of Splunk could be improved."
"We'd like Splunk to reduce false positives."
IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews while Splunk Enterprise Security is ranked 1st in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 240 reviews. IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0, while Splunk Enterprise Security is rated 8.4. 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 Splunk Enterprise Security writes "It has a drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to know SQL or Java to construct a query ". IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security, Sentinel and Fortinet FortiSIEM, whereas Splunk Enterprise Security is most compared with Wazuh, Dynatrace, Elastic Security, Datadog and Azure Monitor. See our IBM Security QRadar vs. Splunk Enterprise Security report.
See our list of best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors and best Log Management vendors.
We monitor all Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
For tools I’d recommend:
-SIEM- LogRhythm
-SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR
Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic.
Also, remember that any EDR/XDR should integrate to the SIEM/SOAR and a strong threat intel source.
If you consider SOC outsourcing take your time and find one you can integrate like a virtual team member. They are only as good as their depth of knowledge in your business and your on-prem SOC.
Apache Metron, ELK, OSSIM, Splunk and Qradar (in cost/benefit order for starters).
I have no experience with Rapid 7 or InsightIDR.
IBM Qradar works great but is not easy to install. If it is running it is a great tool. Also depending on the budget, Riverbed security is a tool to consider. Costs are lower than QRadar and easier to implement.
Or you can use our SaaS solution with QRadar and a lot more built-in. One holistic solution for your complete IT environment.
@Evgeny Belenky, I found Stellar to be quite intriguing.
I would also recommend McAFee’s new console for centralizing and coordinating a well-deployed enterprise solution.
COMODO MDR
Disclaimer: ICE Consulting offers SOC as a Service to our Clients.
For SOC Tools we use Securonix and other in-house developed solutions. Securonix provides an all in one package (SIEM, UEBS, & NTA) that we believe is competitively priced for the Small to Mid Market. Their Customer Service seems better than most and they are always highly rated in the Gartner MQ reports. Set-up is not difficult, but is time consuming for the first time, afterwards each client deployment we have added has seemed to get easier and quicker.
Please contact several vendors and ask for demos, talk with the vendor engineers to ensure the solution will workfor your needs... We evaluated Rapid7, AlienVault (ATT Cybersecurity), QRadar, LogRythm, and Securonix before deciding on Securonix.
Also take your time in evaluating and re-evaluating the products, I took us about about 18 months and over $30K of working with what was utimately the wrong product for us, before moving to Securonix.
Make sure training for the use of the service is included. We have been able to provide entensive training to out team through the vendor and would not have been able to get out SOC offering off the ground without it.
Good Luck!
COMODO SOC covers your entire network and also your email. It is very easy to deploy and is very effective for reports.
I prefer the COMODO SOC solution because it is a very good and easy to deploy product.