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."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"
"The UI of Sentinel is very good and easy to use, even for beginners."
"The standout feature of Sentinel is that, because it's cloud-based and because it's from Microsoft, it integrates really well with all the other Microsoft products. It's really simple to set up and get going."
"Sentinel pricing is good"
"The AI capability is one of the main features of the solution because I believe that in the market, there are few solutions that are providing security solutions based on AI and machine learning."
"The best feature is that onboarding to the SIM solution is quite easy. If you are using cloud-based solutions, it's just a few clicks to migrate it."
"The Log analytics are useful."
"I like the unified security console. You can close incidents using Sentinel in all other Microsoft Security portals, when it comes to incident response."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible log for identifying security threats inside an application. Sentinel is very good at this."
"The stability is phenomenal and we never had any issues with downtime or even had to restart."
"The most valuable feature of Sentinel is the dashboard."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it provides a central locking system for many event sources."
"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 tool is simple to use."
"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."
"We did previously use a different solution, but SolarWinds is much better. It's easy to interact with SolarWinds. It's easy to operate, easy to configure and is generally easier compared to what we were working with before."
"It has in-depth monitoring capabilities and an easy way for setting up dashboards. I can expand in various areas, or I can reduce areas. It supports different types of breakdowns, filters, and rules. It is very simple for an out-of-the-box type of product. It doesn't take a lot of time to figure it out, which is unlike some of the solutions that I have looked at. It meets all the aspects."
"The out of the box reports and dashboard. It was easy to trim down these windows to something we could quickly use."
"It's extremely easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use for the end user."
"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."
"It supports high availability, which is very helpful."
"SolarWinds Security Event Manager has been generally working well."
"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."
"At the network level, there is a limitation in integrating some of the switches or routers with Microsoft Sentinel. Currently, SPAN traffic monitoring is not available in Microsoft Sentinel. I have heard that it is available in Defender for Identity, which is a different product. It would be good if LAN traffic monitoring or SPAN traffic monitoring is available in Microsoft Sentinel. It would add a lot of value. It is available in some of the competitor products in the market."
"The data connectors for third-party tools could be improved, as some aren't available in Sentinel. They need to be available in the data connector panel."
"The reporting could be more structured."
"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."
"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."
"We've seen delays in getting the logs from third-party solutions and sometimes Microsoft products as well. It would be helpful if Microsoft created a list of the delays. That would make things more transparent for customers."
"We do have in-built or out-of-the-box metrics that are shown on the dashboard, but it doesn't give the kind of metrics that we need from our environment whereby we need to check the meantime to detect and meantime to resolve an incident. I have to do it manually. I have to pull all the logs or all the alerts that are fed into Sentinel over a certain period. We do this on a monthly basis, so I go into Microsoft Sentinel and pull all the alerts or incidents we closed over a period of thirty days."
"The solution does not allow outsourced authorizations."
"I would like to see a better reporting work structure on the dashboard."
"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."
"I rate Sentinel a six out of ten for scalability."
"There is a need for more flexibility in customization, especially when working with different vendors and platforms."
"It is an ancient product."
"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."
"SolarWinds should improve its correlation capabilities. The correlation does not automatically detect and reduce the events fast enough. You have to manually do a correlation report, which means the tool is not scalable in many ways."
"It can be difficult for users who are inexperienced with the solution."
"The only issue is the pricetag. SolarWinds is a costly solution."
"We used the support from SolarWinds Security Event Manager and they are knowledgeable but challenging to get in contact with them."
"The product should improve the ease with which you can create event alerts. They are not as hard now but you need to have an easier way."
"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."
"It won't tell you when your backups are failing, but it will give you hints when your database is running on full recovery."
"I don't think SolarWinds is scalable enough. It is somewhat limited when I need to deploy it across multiple environments in a distributed architecture."
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, Google Chronicle Suite, Wazuh and LogRhythm SIEM, whereas SolarWinds Security Event Manager is most compared with ManageEngine Log360, Splunk Enterprise Security, IBM Security QRadar, Wazuh and Microsoft Defender XDR. 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.
