We performed a comparison between Sentinel and SolarWinds Security Event Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"Investigations are something really remarkable. We can drill down right to the raw logs by running different queries and getting those on the console itself."
"The log query feature has been the most valuable because it's very good. You can put your data on the cloud and run queues from Sentinel. It will do it all very fast. I love that I don't have to upload it to an Excel file and then manually look for a piece of information. Sentinel is much faster and is good for big databases."
"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."
"The part that was very unexpected was Sentinel's ability to integrate with Azure Lighthouse, which, as a managed services solution provider, gives us the ability to also manage our customers' Sentinel environments or Sentinel workspaces. It is a big plus for us. With its integration with Lighthouse, we get the ability to monitor multiple workspaces from one portal. A lot of the Microsoft Sentinel workbooks already integrate with that capability, and we save countless amounts of money by simply being able to almost immediately realize multitenant capabilities. That alone is a big plus for us."
"The best functionality that you can get from Azure Sentinel is the SOAR capability. So, you can estimate any type of activity, such as when an alert was triggered or an incident was found."
"The solution offers a lot of data on events. It helps us create specific detection strategies."
"Sentinel also enables you to ingest data from your entire ecosystem and not just from the Microsoft ecosystem. It can receive data from third-party vendors' products such firewalls, network devices, and antivirus solutions. It's not only a Microsoft solution, it's for everything."
"Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible log for identifying security threats inside an application. Sentinel is very good at this."
"The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure."
"The solution's Kusto Query Language (KQL) execution time is pretty good."
"The most valuable feature of Sentinel is the dashboard."
"Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network."
"The native integration with out-of-the box format is hassle free and allows data to be used advantageously."
"One of the most valuable features is the business intelligence engine. It's very important because it keeps track of everything that's happening and alerts us if something is different than expected. The first time I used it, I was shocked at how well it performed. Another valuable feature that I think makes this product worth the price you pay for it is that it connects to basically every system that provides some form of logging, and it's very easy to set up what triggers this."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it provides a central locking system for many event sources."
"SolarWinds is easy to configure, and it provides timely alerts."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting."
"SolarWinds Security Event Manager has been generally working well."
"Some of the rules are most valuable because you can be notified about various things, such as spyware or things that are going on in the internal network."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is the analysis and the knowledge about the incidence that we trace."
"It supports high availability, which is very helpful."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."
"It's easy to build rules and actions based on the logs and event types we collect with the software."
"Its documentation is not so simple. It is easy for somebody who is Microsoft certified or more closely attached to Microsoft solutions. It is not easy for those who are working on open-source platforms. There isn't a central point where everything is documented, and there is no specific training or certification."
"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."
"Sentinel should be improved with more connectors. At the moment, it only covers a few vendors. If I remember correctly, only 100 products are supported natively in Sentinel, although you can connect them with syslog. But Microsoft should increase the number of native connectors to get logs into Sentinel."
"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."
"I believe one of the challenges I encountered was the absence of live training sessions, even with the option to pay for them."
"Multi-tenancy, in my opinion, needs to be improved. I believe it can do better as a managed service provider."
"Microsoft Defender has a built-in threat expert option that enables you to contact an expert. That feature isn't available in Sentinel because it's a huge product that integrates all the technologies. I would like Microsoft to add the threat expert option so we can contact them. There are a few other features, like threat assessment that the PG team is working on. I expect them to release this feature in the next quarter."
"I would like to be able to monitor applications outside of the Azure Cloud."
"The dashboard and customer view should be improved"
"You need a lot of Unix scripting knowledge in order to manage the tool, which is one of the main issues that we faced."
"Log source integration with Sentinel needs to be improved."
"It is an ancient product."
"There is a need for more flexibility in customization, especially when working with different vendors and platforms."
"I rate Sentinel a six out of ten for scalability."
"This product's connection to certain types of cloud systems could be improved. We can do Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, but there are a lot of other things happening in the cloud that we do not connect well enough to. This product could be improved with better connection to cloud-based solutions."
"There is no integration in the web-side of the tool."
"There are no multiple dashboards which would allow you to see information side-by-side."
"The reporting could be more robust. It can be a lot more granular and that will make it a lot more useful in comparison to how it is incorporated at the moment."
"One of the drawbacks of being so flexible is that it is also a fairly complicated software application to install, configure, and maintain."
"The solution's technical support is okay, but we don't have an SLA, and sometimes the response times are very slow."
"The company had to use a third party for the implementation of the solution."
"It is a very technical program. They can simplify it so that it isn't so hard to deal with."
"I would like to have a more customizable dashboard."
"We used the support from SolarWinds Security Event Manager and they are knowledgeable but challenging to get in contact with them."
More SolarWinds Security Event Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
Sentinel is ranked 17th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 16 reviews while SolarWinds Security Event Manager is ranked 21st in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 24 reviews. Sentinel is rated 7.6, while SolarWinds Security Event Manager is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Sentinel writes "An automated solution that helped me detect threats in less than half the time it used to take". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Security Event Manager writes "A comprehensive network security with robust technical capabilities, effective threat response, and centralized management". Sentinel is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, IBM Security QRadar, Wazuh, Google Chronicle Suite and LogRhythm SIEM, whereas SolarWinds Security Event Manager is most compared with ManageEngine Log360, Splunk Enterprise Security, IBM Security QRadar, Microsoft Defender XDR and Wazuh. See our Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager report.
See our list of best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) 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.
