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."Mainly, this is a cloud-native product. So, there are zero concerns about managing the whole infrastructure on-premises."
"It's easy to use. It's a very good product. It can easily ingest data from anywhere. It has an easily understandable language to perform actions."
"Sentinel has features that have helped improve our security poster. It helped us in going ahead and identifying the gaps via analysis and focusing on the key elements."
"Microsoft Sentinel comes preloaded with templates for teaching and analytics rules."
"Having your logs put all in one place with machine learning working on those logs is a good feature. I don't need to start thinking, "Where are my logs?" My logs are in a centralized repository, like Log Analytics, which is why you can't use Sentinel without Log Analytics. Having all those logs in one place is an advantage."
"The AI and ML of Azure Sentinel are valuable. We can use machine learning models at the tenant level and within Office 365 and Microsoft stack. We don't need to depend upon any other connectors. It automatically provisions the native Microsoft products."
"Sentinel pricing is good"
"It is easy to implement (turn on) - does need a skilled analyst to develop queries and playbooks."
"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 most valuable feature of Sentinel is the dashboard."
"The tool is simple to use."
"The native integration with out-of-the box format is hassle free and allows data to be used advantageously."
"It makes everything easier by automating some tasks and growing with our needs."
"The stability is phenomenal and we never had any issues with downtime or even had to restart."
"The solution's Kusto Query Language (KQL) execution time is pretty good."
"The graphical user interface is very user-friendly. SolarWinds is a hybrid solution so you can use it across many platforms."
"SolarWinds is easy to configure, and it provides timely alerts."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is the analysis and the knowledge about the incidence that we trace."
"This tool is simple to use."
"The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers."
"It's extremely easy to deploy."
"SolarWinds' stability is fine. I don't think we've had any software issues."
"It's easy to build rules and actions based on the logs and event types we collect with the software."
"It would be good to have some connectors for third-party SIEM solutions. Many customers are struggling with the integration of Azure Sentinel with their on-premise SIEM. Microsoft is changing the log structure many times a year, which can corrupt a custom integration. It would be good to have some connectors developed by Microsoft or supply vendors, but they are not providing such functionality or tools."
"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."
"Only one thing is missing: NDR is not available out-of-the-box. The competitive cloud-native SIEM providers have the NDR component. Currently, Sentinel needs NDR to be powered from either Corelight or some other NDR provider."
"The following would be a challenge for any product in the market, but we have some in-house apps in our environment... our apps were built with different parameters and the APIs for them are not present in Sentinel. We are working with Microsoft to build those custom APIs that we require. That is currently in progress."
"The playbook is a bit difficult and could be improved."
"We're satisfied with the comprehensiveness of the security protection. That said, we do have issues sometimes where there have been global outages and we need to raise a ticket with Microsoft."
"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."
"When it comes to ingesting Azure native log sources, some of the log sources are specific to the subscription, and it is not always very clear."
"The dashboard and customer view should be improved"
"I rate Sentinel a six out of ten for scalability."
"Creating a drag-and-drop dashboard or workbook in Sentinel is a little more complex compared to other tools like LogRhythm and IBM QRadar."
"I would like to see a better reporting work structure on the dashboard."
"There is a need for more flexibility in customization, especially when working with different vendors and platforms."
"It is an ancient product."
"Log source integration with Sentinel needs to be improved."
"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."
"Under the new system, it is not upgradable the way they say. When you try to do an upgrade, it doesn't really work unless you dump everything and start from scratch. You lose a lot of your nodes. Whenever you set your nodes up and everything else, they don't want to bring those nodes back in, so you have to really go back and restructure all your nodes. I went from version 6.5 to version 6.6 and then to version 6.7. I then went to version 2019, and now it is version 2020. It would be good if we can upgrade without having to delete everything and start from scratch. They can maybe build more KPIs and other things for the dashboard. Some of the other systems already have built-in KPIs. SolarWinds is starting to catch up, but it is not there yet. They can include some of the business or industry standards for tracking the time, that is, the meantime to detect (MTTD) and the meantime to resolve (MTTR). They can also find a way to build a KPI that measures the number of instances of port scans experienced in a week or a month."
"It can be difficult for users who are inexperienced with the solution."
"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."
"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 would like to have a more customizable dashboard."
"The only issue is the pricetag. SolarWinds is a costly solution."
"One of the drawbacks of being so flexible is that it is also a fairly complicated software application to install, configure, and maintain."
"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."
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.
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