We performed a comparison between IBM Security QRadar and Fortinet FortiSIEM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: IBM Security QRadar users say the solution provides extensive information and helpful leads for locating pertinent data. QRadar stands out with its comprehensive network visibility and strong SIEM capabilities. Fortinet FortiSIEM is praised for its advanced agents and effective correlation capabilities. Reviews say FortiSIEM excels at anomaly reporting and threat hunting. IBM Security QRadar could improve its rule deployment and lower its false positive rate. Users would also like expanded storage capacity, streamlined user management, and a more mature architecture. Fortinet FortiSIEM could benefit from better integration guides, more flexible reporting, and reduced resource consumption. Users also suggest adding more AI capabilities and improving database monitoring.
Service and Support: Some customers of IBM Security QRadar have had trouble connecting with knowledgeable support staff and experienced delayed responses. Some FortiSIEM customers consider Fortinet support to be satisfactory and efficient, while others were unhappy and thought the engineers could be more knowledgeable.
Ease of Deployment: IBM Security QRadar's initial setup can be complex for users without expertise, and the difficulty may vary depending on the size of the data set. Some FortiSIEM users found it effortless to install within a day or two. Nonetheless, others encountered difficulties regarding CPU and memory requirements, as well as a lengthier deployment time.
Pricing: IBM Security QRadar can be costly because users need to buy new hardware to upgrade. FortiSIEM is generally regarded as reasonably priced and competitive. However, FortiSIEM may still be deemed costly in developing markets.
ROI: IBM Security QRadar delivers a high return on investment, improving security through its advanced user behavior analytics. Fortinet FortiSIEM has consistently delivered a positive return on investment for businesses.
Comparison Results: Our users prefer IBM Security QRadar over Fortinet FortiSIEM. The advanced security features and overall strength of QRadar make it the favored option. Users like QRadar's extensive and actionable insights, user-friendly interface, and adaptability. QRadar offers a comprehensive overview of network activity and risk management.
"What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part."
"Microsoft Sentinel provides the capability to integrate different log sources. On top of having several data connectors in place, you can also do integration with a threat intelligence platform to enhance and enrich the data that's available. You can collect as many logs and build all the use cases."
"The initial setup is very simple and straightforward."
"Sentinel pricing is good"
"The machine learning and artificial intelligence on offer are great."
"The SOAR playbooks are Sentinel's most valuable feature. It gives you a unified toolset for detecting, investigating, and responding to incidents. That's what clearly differentiates Sentinels from its competitors. It's cloud-native, offering end-to-end coverage with more than 120 connectors. All types of data logs can be poured into the system so analysis can happen. That end-to-end visibility gives it the advantage."
"I like the unified security console. You can close incidents using Sentinel in all other Microsoft Security portals, when it comes to incident response."
"One of the most valuable features is that it creates a kind of a single pane of glass for organizations that already use Microsoft software. So, when they have things like Microsoft 365, it is very easy for them to kind of plug in or enroll those endpoints into the Azure Sentinel service."
"It is used as an alerting platform."
"We like the integration of all of these Fortinet platforms together. Everything is integrated well, and we are able to sell that as a service to our customers."
"It's a very nice solution to work with."
"The product is quite well-organized. The GUI makes it easy to navigate."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM has its own validated and authentic IP database that marks malicious IP attacks against the firewall and generates an alert for the same."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiSIEM are the SD-WAN, Global LAN, and application controls."
"The solution is easy to use and user-friendly."
"The event correlation is pretty robust. The GUI is pretty good."
"It is really helpful to us from the compliance point of view."
"The pre-canned rules and reports in this product are a huge plus."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is very stable, easy to get going, and easy to manage. It is also easy to review all incidents."
"IBM QRadar is easy to scale, it doesn't affect the environment. In our office, we have around 40 - 50 users, but our clients have more users on their networks. Our organization has staff in the software department that manages IBM QRadar for us."
"It has a powerful GUI where you can put together your use cases, and don't have to write your own scripts."
"The initial setup is not complex or difficult."
"The solution is relatively easy to use."
"The best part of this solution is having a third-party SOC."
"Its implementation could be simpler. It is not really simple or straightforward. It is in the middle. Sometimes, connectors are a little bit complex."
"They can work on the EDR side of things... Every time we need to onboard these kinds of machines into the EDR, we need to do it with the help of Intune, to sync up the devices, and do the configuration. I'm looking for something on the EDR side that will reduce this kind of work."
"In terms of features I would like to see in future releases, I'm interested in a few more use cases around automation. I do believe a lot of automation is available, and more is in progress, but that would be my area of interest."
"There is some relatively advanced knowledge that you have to have to properly leverage Sentinel's full capabilities. I'm thinking about things like the creation of workbooks, how you do threat-hunting, and the kinds of notifications you're getting... It takes time for people to ramp up on that and develop a familiarity or expertise with it."
"It has been a challenge with Azure Sentinel to onboard the Syslog server from FortiGate. Azure Sentinel can work better on that shift between the Syslog server and a firewall."
"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."
"The reporting could be more structured."
"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."
"The support of the product changed recently, and I don't think it's for the better. They should work to improve the support they offer to clients."
"It lacks a "wizard" that shows a particular user's activity or particular circumstance. I think the interface is intimidating because there's so much information there."
"The performance can be improved. Sometimes it takes a long time to fetch data."
"With FortiSIEM, the issue has to do with the ways we can generate a report. It's not as flexible compared to that with other SIEM tools, like Splunk."
"The biggest thing that could be better is a quicker response to support cases."
"The solution needs to do a better job with third party integration. Right now, that's lacking on the solution. I specifically am talking about the AWS environment. Most of the AWS environment products do not have that capability to integrate."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM could improve to extend to several locations or sites."
"Sometimes, if there are changes made by a user on a database server, it can be difficult to get that information on the fly. I would like to see a situation where once I specify a user with the database server I need, and with the changes they have performed on that, I don't need to continue my search pattern to drill down just to get the information."
"They need to improve their threat intelligence feed and they need to improve their user behavior analytics modules."
"I'd like them to improve the offense. When QRadar detects something, it creates what it calls offenses. So, it has a rudimentary ticketing system inside of it. This is the same interface that was there when I started using it 12 years ago. It just has not been improved. They do allow integration with IBM Resilient, but IBM Resilient is grotesquely expensive. The most effective integration that IBM offers today is with IBM Resilient, which is an instant response platform. It is a very good platform, but it is very expensive. They really should do something with the offense handling because it is very difficult to scale, and it has limitations. The maximum number of offenses that it can carry is 16K. After 16K, you have to flush your offenses out. So, it is all or nothing. You lose all your offenses up until that point in time, and you don't have any history within the offense list of older events. If you're dealing with multiple customers, this becomes problematic. That's why you need to use another product to do the actual ticketing. If you wanted the ticket existence, you would normally interface with ServiceNow, SolarWinds, or some other product like that."
"In a future release, the solution could provide malware analysis."
"Dashboards and reports could provide better visualization of SIEM activity."
"I need a solution which will send alerts in the event of any behavior."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the script which we have to create for custom actions. QRadar needs to improve that feature. Additionally, QRadar has to provide the playbooks designing features."
"The only challenge is that IBM has been a closed enterprise. It should be more open to integrating with other providers at an enterprise level. We're a bank and the core banking system integration is not way straightforward and there is no integration between IBM and these products. If IBM could open up and provide a way of integrating it seamlessly, without charging more for it, that would make a big difference."
"It's resource-intensive."
Fortinet FortiSIEM is ranked 8th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 63 reviews while IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews. Fortinet FortiSIEM is rated 7.6, while IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiSIEM writes "It's cheaper than other solutions with the same features but lacks integration with many third-party vendors". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Security QRadar writes "A highly stable and scalable solution that provides good technical support". Fortinet FortiSIEM is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, LogRhythm SIEM, Wazuh, ThousandEyes and PRTG Network Monitor, whereas IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and Sentinel. See our Fortinet FortiSIEM vs. IBM Security QRadar report.
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